It especially annoys me when racists are accused of “discrimination”. The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members of one “race” to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.
To be opposed to racism in the postgenome universe is to be opposed to the concept. This realisation lags well behind the reality. Pseudo-scientists who work on supposed “proofs” of correlation between IQ and “race’ are now rightly criticised because of the opacity and arbitrariness of the definition of “intelligence”, let alone of its alleged and protean “quotient”. But they are surely much more vulnerable in their assumption that a person’s “race” can be defined with any exactitude. As I write this, my morning’s New York Times has a solemn story about a new attorney general who once accepted an honorary degree from a southern “university” that prohibits “interracial dating.” Some say this “university” is retrograde, others, more lenient, point out that it now permits interracial dating with parental permission. My quarrel would be with anyone employing the term “interracial” to describe a boy-girl encounter between any two humans. Or a boy-boy or girl-girl one, if it comes to that, which it most certainly will.
For years, when I went to renew my annual pass at the United States Senate, I was made to fill in two forms. The first asked me for my biographical details and the second stipulated that I had signed the former under penalty of perjury. I was grateful for the latter form, because when asked to state my “race” I always put “human” in the required box. This led to a yearly row. “Put ‘white’” I was once told – by an African-American clerk, I might add. I explained that white was not even a color, let alone a race. I also drew his attention to the perjury provision that obliged me to state only the truth. “Put ‘Caucasian,’” I was told on another occasion. I said that I had no connection with the Caucasus and no belief in the outmodeled ethnology that had produced the category. So it went on until one year there was no race space on the form. I’d like to claim credit for this, though I probably can’t. I offer you the story, also, as part of my recommendation that one acts bloody-minded as often as the odds are favorable and even sometimes when they are not: it’s good exercise.
