The Missing Link

Its first flawed premise is that race is among the most significant characteristics an individual possesses, defining their identity, their wants and their needs. Race does matter in our society, but only because we’ve constructed it to matter. Identity politics has allowed these racial constructions to survive and to ossify long past the time when they ought to have crumbled.

The second flawed premise is that it’s possible to create a fair society by putting everyone into racial groups, gauging the amount of discrimination they face and countering it with positive discrimination.

Almost everyone who sees racial injustice wants to rectify it, and positive discrimination is a tempting path. But when the government begins favoring some citizens due to their race other citizens are inevitably penalized due to their race. In a society with as many races and ethnicities as ours—not to mention people of mixed race and ethnicity—that’s a recipe for unfairness and rising racial resentment.

After spending the last generation lauding affirmative action, diversity quotas and self-proclaimed ethnic group leaders who purport to speak for all members of their race, is it any wonder that two large minority groups, Latinos and blacks, now see one another as adversaries? Of course they are competing: we’ve set up a system where political spoils accrue to the most powerful racial identity group. Can it be otherwise that blacks and Latinos see one another as “others� out to take what could be theirs?

When our government policies and our political races treat race as one of the most significant traits a person has is it any wonder that the idea endures in our society to this day? If blacks know that some political favors are handed out not because they represent the most fair policy but because blacks represent the biggest minority group isn’t subsequent black antipathy toward Latinos–and vice versa– not only inevitable, but rational under the system of incentives we’ve intentionally established?

It’s long past time that we strive again toward Martin Luther King’s ideal: a society where everyone is treated equally under the law and where the content of your character matters more than the color of your skin.

Race blind government policies and an end to identity politics won’t end racism immediately. Yet racism endures only insofar as people of different races think of one another as somehow essentially different. As long as our government treats race as a core characteristic of an individual, society will internalize that misguided worldview. It will never die out.

The sooner our government and institutions treat all people equally, the sooner individuals will stop seeing people of a different race as adversaries and “others�. The sooner blacks and Latinos won’t be threatened by the success of a rival faction, but heartened by the success of their fellow Americans. The sooner racism will finally end, a goal that seems well-worth fighting for, though it may be a long, hard slog.