What is Racelessness?

In my last post, I mentioned that my church was committed to being on the right side of racism. However, we remained deeply committed to the construct of race and, quite honestly, looked down on anyone who didn’t. In our discussions about race and racism, it was common to run into someone who would assert, “There is no such thing as races of humans. There is only one human race!” Statements like these appeared to us to be cop outs; the retort of those who refused to acknowledge the real problems and who likely hated the race they were assigned. In fairness to us, we may have been right about some who said or still say things like this, but on our end, we were failing to acknowledge the truth of the statement(s). Why? Well, for three main reasons. First, we believed race to be an objective reality. We would lack intellectual integrity if we denied what is true in order to prove the falsehoods of another argument. (I wish this were the case in the halls of politics today, or ever really.) Secondly, we held so tightly to racial categories, especially minority racial categories, because we saw it as a means of liberation. In essence, we saw race as an objective reality that others wanted us to be ashamed of. By embracing this objective “truth” about ourselves, we were promoting our inherent value and silencing their hate. Lastly, we did not want to be seen as colorblind. Being called colorblind was like being cursed at, and truthfully, it is a terrible way to combat racism. However, racelessness contends that none of these are good reasons to embrace race as a necessary reality. So what is reacelessness?

Racelessness may be best defined by what it is not. Racelessness is not colorblindness. When someone says that they are colorblind, they mean that they do not readily perceive someone’s race, either primarily or at all. Racelessness celebrates the phenotypical differences of different human beings, such as skin color, hair texture, and eye color. Racelessness is not the denial of racism. Racelessness acknowledges racism as a fundamental problem in America and the world. Racelessness, then, serves as an anti-racist framework that sees the construction of race as the foundational means of racism. Racelessness asserts that the only way to eliminate racism effectively is to abolish the practice of ascribing race to human beings. As one of the pioneers of reacelessness, Dr. Sheena Mason contends that race is not real. Instead, it is an imaginary construct that has been developed throughout history for the purpose of subjugating some groups of humans to others. In her book … Dr. Mason makes a helpful distinction between racism in general and anti-black racism, which is the primary focus of her work. By making this distinction, she highlights the specific brand of racism that is prevelant in America and the West. Anti-black racism is the racist framework that designates races to identify those who are considered white (white meaning supreme according to the historical development of race in the West) and every other racial category in subjugation to whiteness. At the bottom of this list of inferior races would be “black.” In this way, Dr. Mason’s work centers on the white-black race paradigm, though it could be used broadly as a tool to fight racism in general.

I am a proponent of racelessness and Dr. Mason’s work, but with a few caveats. First, Dr. Mason describes herself as a liberal who is as left as one can be without falling off the spectrum. Toward this end, a lot of her work comes off as critical of organized religion and conservative ideals. Though some of my views may lean left or right of center, I am largely what would be described as a conservative (evangelical) Christian who does not share many of her moral convictions. Secondly, Dr. Mason writes about religion as a primary source of division among humans. While I agree that religion has been used toward this end, I contest that the Biblical Faith of Christ is the greatest proponent of the kind of unity she seeks. Lastly, she contends that race is not a social construct but purely imaginary. This view is difficult for me to grasp since all social constructs are, at least to some degree, reality as people “imagine” it. I suspect that she labels race as a construct to avoid potentially confusing it with other social constructs that are real or even necessary for her, like gender or sexuality. Beyond these caveats, I am pretty much in full agreement with her. Race is fundamentally a tool of oppression. Continuing to embrace it as an objective reality will only serve to perpetuate its toxicity. We can end racism, but first we must end race. So what is race?