RACE HAS NO BASIS IN REALITY

 

Using the concept of race is a bit like categorising cars by their colour rather than their make. Or saying that as a cherry turns from green to red, it’s turning from one type of fruit into another.

 

The historical concept of race, as we know it, came about as a means to further empire and slavery: to make it palatable. The concepts that were invented to explaining and justify both exploitation and apartheid are so ingrained, that even the advent of modern genetics can’t wash away these primitive modes of thoughts – they are still with us, alive and kicking.

MICHELLE: “BLACK AFRICAN”

THE NEW PHRENOLOGY

 

Phrenology was the ‘science’ of divining people’s personality traits through lumps and bumps on their skuls. Hitler had his own version of this – how ‘sub humans’ looked different from the rest, saying that the devil ‘assumes the living shape of the Jew’.

 

But we’re not actually blameless ourselves, because every time we ascribe values, motives or personality to those that we don’t actually know, we are carrying out our own version of phrenology.

 

And without an almost paradoxical interference from us, subjected on the certainty of our thinking, we keep blithely believing that we have a unique and clairvoyant-like ability to alchemise a person’s exterior into a nuanced picture of their interior.

 

But by accepting that our assumptions are groundless, our prejudice becomes powerless.

LAUREN: “FINNISH & NIGERIAN”

HINA: “BRITISH INDIAN”

JONATHAN: “IRISH”

DEV: “INDIAN”