FRANCHESCA RAMSEY: Have you ever wondered why people say
“Oh, I don’t see color”
as a way to “fix” racism?
Yeah, that doesn’t work.
On this show, we talk about race all the time,
but I’ve got a bomb to drop:
biologically speaking, race doesn’t exist!
Oh my goodness, we’ve all been lied to!!
Wait, why am I hosting this show?
So race isn’t biological,
but the social construct of race and racism
still have a very real impact on everyone’s lives.
And this isn’t just about feelings —
race is all about the structural foundation
of social power.
So why do so many people incorrectly think race is biological?
Well beyond the fact
that we like to group people based on external characteristics,
it goes like this:
in biology, there IS a concept
of genetically different subspecies
which a lot of people confuse with human races.
Biologists actually have a scale for this and humans
don’t even come close to qualifying.
Throughout history, people have used
this incorrect understanding of sub-species
to justify all kinds of terribleness
and even proclaim other races as less than human,
but modern genetics has shown that the lines around “race” are so arbitrary
that they’re actually meaningless.
And since I’m not a scientist, I’ll take a quote.
Francis Collins, the director
of the National Human Genome Research Institute,
said it himself:
“Those who wish to draw precise racial boundaries around certain groups
will not be able to use science as a legitimate justification.”
Oops. I dropped the mic.
So if race doesn’t exist biologically,
why do we keep talking about it?
Sound the alarm —
we keep talking about race because we created it.
Yay, us.
That’s right — race is a social construct.
A social construct is a category, perception,
or idea created and developed by society
and then applied to individuals or groups.
But social constructs are still very real
and have huge impacts on our lives.
Because you know what else is a social construct? Money.
And if you don’t think money has an enormous impact on your life,
well then congratulations,
you either have a trust fund or you’re an adorable baby.
Or maybe you’re a dog. “Here’s what I know:
talking about racism just creates more racism.”
Uh, no.
First off, race isn’t the problem, racism is.
And even if it was the problem, problems don’t get worse when you talk about them
and they don’t magically go away when you ignore them.
“Uh, not true.
I had five cavities and I ignored them
and all five of those teeth fell out.
Poof, problem solved.”
Colorblindness, while nice in theory,
has no effect on structural and institutional racism.
Racism is a system,
and that system benefits certain people at the expense of others.
Ignoring it just lets those problems persist.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look
at some examples where colorblindness doesn’t work.
Number one: preschool punishment.
Let’s face a fact:
preschool-age children of every race are monsters.
But according to the U.S. Department of Education Office
for Civil Rights report released in 2014,
black children make up eighteen percent of preschoolers
but almost half of all suspensions. Half!
And I don’t think anybody believes
all these preschool teachers
are racists out to get little black children,
but the data shows that black and Latino children
often face steeper punishments
than their white classmates for the same behavior.
That’s a problem,
and simply believing we shouldn’t see race or we shouldn’t talk about race
does nothing to solve this problem.
Number two: the name study.
A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research
confirmed that people with “ethnic-sounding” names
(that’s a whole ‘nother episode) are less likely to get interviewed
when they apply for jobs.
Meanwhile, applicants with “white-sounding” names
actually get thirty-three percent more callbacks for interviews.
It’s the equivalent of having eight years of additional experience!
Shout out to all the white Daquans struggling to get job interviews.
And it’s not just black and white:
they’ve done similar around the world,
and in Canada people with white-sounding names
were thirty-five percent more likely to get callbacks than people
with Indian- or Chinese-sounding names.
So instead of just assuming people shouldn’t care about color or names,
companies, governments, and schools should take the bias
out of hiring and experiment with nameless résumés to,
you know, solve the problem.
Number three: renting an apartment.
When the Department of Housing and Urban Development
and the Urban Institute did a study about real estate,
they found that black, Latino,
and Asian renters were shown up to twelve percent fewer units
than white renters.
And when the Fair Housing Justice Center used actors to apply for apartments,
they found that black and Latino renters were often told
there were no apartments available,
while white applicants were shown apartments in the same building.
“So this building has a pool, a laundry room,
and a racist landlady!”
Colorblindness won’t fix housing discrimination;
we’re going to need smart laws and a concerted effort for that.
So tell me again how colorblindness is gonna fix the fact
that I can’t get an education, a job, or a house.
In many cases, colorblindness is actively harmful
because it creates a false sense of security
for the groups it directly benefits.
The people who’ve benefited from systemic racism can assume
that they got the job or a house or weren’t suspended from preschool
simply because they were more qualified
or just better.
Ignoring race or only acknowledging that it doesn’t exist biologically
is not a solution to these systemic issues.
It takes work, effort, laws,
and new systems to undo racism.
These differences may seem minute,
but they’re part of a very large structure
of oppression that’s been ingrained in us.
If we can understand that we made it up,
we can actively work to change it.
Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time,
right here on Decoded.