Does Race Exist?

Sorry for my silence yesterday. I was sick, and who wants to read about that? Nothing serious, just your garden variety cold, but I do notice that I get a lot less of them ever since embarking on the program to walk 10,000 steps per day. Exercise must be even better than apples at keeping the doctor away! I did manage to get my steps yesterday, believe it or not. A walk out in the fresh air, away from other people so you can’t sneeze on them, is probably just what the doctor ordered anyway.

Lately some more conservative types seem to be on this kick that “race doesn’t exist.” Where does this idea come from? Yes, there is very little physiological difference between the races, and we are supposed to see everyone as a child of God no matter what color they are, but it seems disingenuous that the people who are saying this are the ones who seem to have the most racist attitudes. I personally think it is easy to say race doesn’t exist when you have never been on the receiving end of institutionalized racism. Not that I know how that feels either, but I can clearly see that it happens. I have seen too many nonwhite people passed over for promotions or made to take “proper English” classes that the rest of us didn’t have to take, or even just get pulled over by the cops in disproportionate numbers, to really buy that these white people don’t believe race exists. They just don’t want to do anything about racism, like examine their own beliefs. We can’t end racism by saying that race doesn’t exist; that is like the solution our town had for a problem neighborhood – they just changed the name of the neighborhood, so that the “Street Name Here” problem vanished. Of course the underlying problem was still there, but you couldn’t say that the problem with that specific name existed anymore!

Famous Hat