Racism is Real. “Race” is Not.

My book, Overcoming the Lie of “Race”: A Personal, Philosophical, and Political Perspective, is now available in its Second Edition. It contains a new Epilogue that addresses the current political situation and the alarming rise of bigotry. It also contains some additions and clarifications. You may order it from your local bookstore (from Ingram distributor) or from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.

Overcoming the Lie of “Race” relies on history, genetic studies, and the author's personal experiences to expose the politically inspired false concepts, lies and deceit that underlie the idea of "race." It proposes how we should move forward in acknowledging that racism is real, “race” is not.

Here are a few selections from the book:

Prefatory quotations--

“The legacy of the past racism directed at blacks in the United States is more like a bacillus that we have failed to destroy, a live germ that not only continues to make some of us ill but retains the capacity to generate new strains of a disease for which we have no certain cure.”

—George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (2002), p. 143.

“Racism is, and always has been, the way America has sorted and ranked its people in a bitterly divisive, humanity-robbing system.”

—Debby Irving, Waking Up White (2014), p. 31.

“’Race’ itself is a fiction, one that has no basis in biology or any long-standing, consistent usage in human culture.”

--Jacqueline Jones, A Dreadful Deceit (2013), p. x.

Quotation introducing the new Epilogue:

“The first American revolution protected slavery; the second—the Civil War—destroyed it, but exposed a racism that maintained the subordination of black people.”

—Alfred & Ruth Blumrosen, Slave Nation (2005), p. 257.

From Chapter 11:

“Every solution to the problem of racism in our society must begin with the explicit realization that human ‘races’ do not exist. If we are to eliminate racism, we must rid ourselves of the very idea of ‘race.’”

To inform yourself about combating racism, you should read this book. Remember: Racism is real. “Race” is not.

For more information, go to JohnLHodge.com.

Former President Richard M. Nixon: Documented Racist

Historians have examined the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany and asked, “How did this happen?” We must now examine the rise to power of Richard M. Nixon, former President of the United States, and also ask, “How did this happen?”                               

Fortunately the U.S. Constitution, the balance of powers in the U.S. government, and Nixon’s demise for other reasons prevented Nixon from doing as much harm as Hitler. Otherwise Nixon might have fulfilled his stated desire to end the Vietnam war by bombing Southeast Asia into oblivion.

But why, after the success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was a racist elected President of the United States twice, in 1968 and 1972?

The racism of Nixon is now documented, using Nixon’s own words from his secret tapes, in this YouTube series produced by Harry Shearer, “Nixon’s the One.” Boston Globe staff writer Matthew Gilbert nicely summed up this series in his review, “Nixon,word for word” (Boston Globe, November 23, 2014, N16).

Nixon’s racist comments are shocking. His words are what we could expect from a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He blames Jews for the nation’s ills, insults blacks and Latinos, and thinks homosexuality caused the decline of ancient empires.

Probably most people who voted for Nixon did not know of his racism. Why, and how, were Nixon’s racist views kept from the public? Surely he must have expressed them before his election to President. He had been Vice-President for eight years, and before that a senator from California.

Just as many Germans alive in the 1940s said that they did not know that Jews were being exterminated, now Americans who voted for Nixon may say that they did not know that Nixon was a racist.

Perhaps they are correct. But why didn’t the public know?

In response to Gilbert’s review, I wrote the following letter that was published in the Boston Globe, Sunday, November 30, 2014, N20 (“Feedback” in the SundayArts section)(not online):

Links: to all my letters published in the Boston Globe, New York Times and Washington Post

The Myth of "Race" and Remedies for Past Harm--Part II.

The New York Times published the complete "Sunday Dialogue" yesterday online and today in print, titled "The Meaning of 'Race'" (link). This consists of my initial letter (also posted here July 16), five responses from readers, and my response to the readers.

My response is reprinted here:

The Writer Responds

Most responders would seem to agree with Mr. Rumbaut: “ ‘Race’ is a social status, not a zoological one.” But, as Mr. Bennett suggests, rational arguments are not enough to change our societal reality.

That reality is not changed by a “full mixture of genetic pools,” as Mr. Bennett proposes, because that mixture already exists. The idea of “race” prevents us from seeing it. As Dr. Monac points out, people we identify by a “race” are mixed with other “races.” Anyone who observes people riding the Manhattan subways sees a broad range of mixtures.

When we cannot tell what “racial” category a person fits into, we say the person is “mixed race.” But when you mix two myths, you get a third myth. The mixing of people we now identify as of different “races” is as old as the migrations of Homo sapiens out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

“Race” is a mental construct, not a physical reality. It is false construct that should be abandoned, not redefined. But while discussing the construct like academics, we have avoided discussing how to remedy the harm it has caused.

JOHN L. HODGE
Boston, July 19, 2013

I address remedying the harm racism has caused in Chapter 5 of my book, How We Are Our Enemy--And How to Stop, in the section titled "Go Beyond Affirmative Action to Eliminate the Effects of Past Discrimination--and Poverty."

The Myth of "Race" and Remedies for Past Harm

My letter below was published in the New York Times (online today; in print tomorrow) criticizing the concept of "race" while affirming the need for remedies for past harm. This is an "Invitation to a Dialogue" which requests responses to NYT by Thursday. On Sunday (according to the normal procedure) NYT will reprint my letter along with responses and my reply to the responses. 

LETTER

Invitation to a Dialogue: The Myth of ‘Race’

Published: July 16, 2013

To the Editor:

What should we do about “race”?

Over many decades, those who study genetics have found no biological evidence to support the idea that humans consist of different “races.” Based on such scientific data, Ashley Montagu published “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race” in 1942. New discoveries have confirmed what he said then. So why, over seven decades after his book, do we keep talking and living as though biological “races” exist?

Not only are certain “racial” classifications flawed, as suggested in “Has ‘Caucasian’ Lost Its Meaning?” (Sunday Review, July 7); all “racial” classifications are inherently flawed, because they are based on the false idea of “race.”

The myth of “race” has supported the horrors of slavery, apartheid, segregation, eugenics and the Holocaust. It continues to support racism. We cannot simply ignore the harm this myth has caused and pretend that the myth never existed.

The scientific, democratic and ethical goal should be to eliminate the false idea of “race” completely. But how do we both destroy the myth and remedy the harm it has caused?

We can begin by mentally changing how we see people. When we look at someone and automatically think about that person’s “race,” we must realize that we are not seeing “race” but instead seeing an arbitrary and harmful societal classification imposed on a continuum of physical differences.

When we want to ask how someone is classified by the myth, we should always put “race” or “racial” in quotation marks (as I have done here). Such questions still need to be asked, for example, on applications for college or a job, or for the census, for the answers provide the data needed to maintain diversity in education and the workplace and to monitor and remedy the harms the myth has caused and continues to cause. The long-term goal, however, is to make these questions obsolete.

JOHN L. HODGE
Boston, July 15, 2013

The writer is a retired lawyer, former professor of philosophy and the author of books, essays and a blog on democracy, ethics and human rights.

Editors’ Note: We invite readers to respond by Thursday for the Sunday Dialogue. We plan to publish responses and Mr. Hodge’s rejoinder in the Sunday Review. E-mail:letters@nytimes.com

A version of this letter appeared in print on July 17, 2013, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Invitation to a Dialogue: The Myth of ‘Race’.

Attack the Myth of “Race” and Keep but Modify Affirmative Action

The Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, on May 5, 2013, noted the absurdity of the question on “race” contained in Question 9 of the U.S. Census: “How to update census’ race question.” (See image of Question 9 below.) In addition to checking “white,” or “black, African Am. or Negro,” or “American Indian or Alaska Native,” there are several additional choices that are Asian nationalities or ethnicities. (The term “Negro” will be dropped.) The question not only confuses “race” with ethnicity and nationality, it also implicitly affirms the false idea that “races” exist as biological entities. This lie is not something that the U.S. Government should be perpetuating.

Mr. Page begins the column by noting the confusion of a woman who considered herself “white” but who recently discovered that she had an African-American ancestor. Was she “white” or “African-American”? Her dilemma was published on TheRoot.com. That website also published a short article linking to Mr. Page’s Tribune column: “The Census Race Question Isn't Working.”

While Mr. Page criticizes the old “race” boxes, I did not think his critique went far enough. Thus, I posted the following comment to TheRoot.com article:

Yes, the Census form question on “race” makes no sense. But it needs more revision than you suggest. Genetically, there is no such thing as a “race.” (Even if they existed, most Americans are mixed with one thing or another--as the young “white” woman discovered.) “Races” are not biological realities but are mythical social constructs that falsely impose rigid categories on a continuum. It is a very powerful and harmful myth that we must expose as nothing but a myth. (This does not mean that “affirmative action” has to be ended--the harm that the myth has done needs to be remedied.) Thus, the census question should not ask about anyone’s “race,” but instead should ask, “What ‘race’ or ethnicity do others generally consider you to be?” That gets the information needed to monitor discrimination without affirming the myth. 
--John L. Hodge (author--JohnLHodge.com) 

A reader replied to my comment by noting the harm of affirmative action programs. This is my reply to his reply:

. . . affirmative action does not have to be based solely on color. It should take into consideration other factors and shift its focus to impoverished backgrounds regardless of color, but still address the past adverse effects of racism where appropriate. AA needs to change but not be abandoned.

As I argued in Chapter 5 of my book, How We Are Our Enemy--And How to Stop, the concept of affirmative action should not be abandoned. We cannot ignore the immense harm the false concept of “race” has inflicted on us. It is wrong to close our eyes and just say, “Too bad, but there is nothing we can do now.” Nonetheless, a shift needs to be made from a purely “racial” or gender-based affirmative action to focus more on remedying the effects of poverty and poor education regardless of the color, ethnicity or gender of the victims.

The point is that we can attack the myth of “race” and at the same time find ways to address the immense harm that the myth of “race” has caused and continues to cause.

The parenthetical statement in my comment, “Even if they [races] existed, most Americans are mixed with one thing or another,” is based on a book, DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America by Bryan Sykes .

Here is the absurd Question 9 on the U.S. Census Form:

Also see my previous post,  It’s Past Time to Relegate “Race” to History .

It’s Past Time to Relegate “Race” to History

A conservative columnist for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby, got it right (for a change), when he said, “Perhaps by then [a generation or two down the road] the very idea of race -- white, black or anything else -- will finally have been discarded, and American children will marvel at the idea that color of skin or shape of eye could ever have mattered so much to their forbears.” (“When ‘white’ is a trick of definition,” Boston Globe, K9.)

Only 45 years ago, when I was twenty-seven years old, lawyers defended a Virginia law that banned “interracial marriage” on the grounds that the law prevented pollution of the “white race.” The U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark decision (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 [1967]) overturned the Virginia law, and since then no laws banning “interracial” marriage could be enforced in the U.S.

Those laws banning “interracial” marriages, which several states still had in 1967, relied on a concept of “race” that has no scientific basis. Ashley Montagu pointed this out in his book, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, first published in 1942, 25 years before the decision in Loving v. Virginia. As I pointed out in How We Are Our Enemy -- And How to Stop, “ ‘Race’ is a mythical creation of the human imagination, having no basis in biology. There is no ‘race’ gene. It is long past the time when the concept of ‘race’ should be totally extinguished from our way of thinking” (p.136).

Yet, science is continually ignored when we talk about “mixed race” couples, etc. There is no such thing. If you mix nothing with nothing, you get nothing.

It is still necessary, of course, to recognize racism and the reality of different ethnicities and cultural groupings. These are observable phenomena. “Race” is not observable. It is a concept inferred from observation -- and a concept that observation and genetics do not support now and never did.

In my rare support of Mr. Jacoby, I wrote a letter to the editor, which the Boston Globe published today (6/3/2012), with minor modifications, in its “Opinion” section. Here is the letter as published (the misleading title is the Globe's):

Time at last for us to become post-racial

Jeff Jacoby effectively makes a case for getting rid of the very idea of “race” (“When ‘white’ is a trick of definition,” Op-ed, May 27). I fully agree. Not only is “white” a trick of definition. So are all of the other terms used to designate race. But for these tricks, President Obama, given his biological parents, is as much “white” as he is “black.” Yet we try to fit him and everyone else into so-called racial categories that make no sense.

“Race” exists only as a mythical idea created centuries ago by people who wanted to affirm the superiority of those who looked like them. It is past time to get rid of this false idea.

Whenever we use the term “race,” we should put it in quotation marks as a way of recognizing and affirming that it is primarily an idea that exists to support racism.

John L. Hodge

Jamaica Plain