“I was at the store the other day, and there was this black guy who was so funny.” Wait a minute. The word “black” has nothing to do with the story. Another one I heard recently, “I would never drive to that area of town by myself.” A place in town I have frequented a couple of times a month for years without hesitation.
Do you know people who talk like that? Their language makes clear their own biases, their own bigotry, and possibly their own racism.
How do you begin a conversation about race with someone like that? You would start by explaining that race doesn’t exist.
Biologically, it never has, and it never will. And that all humans are 99.998% genetically identical. And that the 0.002% represents things like hair, eye, and skin color.
Race is a fabrication that has been created by humans (aka artificial social construct), and was created by people who had the power to define other people as groups, as inferior, and of course, as races.
Imagine 50 people are lined up against a wall and organized by skin tone, from lightest to darkest. Of those 50 people, ask yourself, where does white end, and where does black begin?
Once you understand the artificial nature of defining someone as black and someone as white, then you have to ask, do you think race is about skin color? Or do you think it’s about culture?