Race is not a fact of nature but a fabrication of history, a lie so grand and insidious it became indistinguishable from truth. It is not etched in our DNA, but rather carved into the social institutions that shape our lives, weaponized to confer power upon one group while marginalizing others. This idea...that race is a social construct...is not merely academic. It is a political reality with profound consequences, forged in colonial ambition, upheld through slavery, and passed on in subtle and overt ways from generation to generation. To understand race is to unravel the very scaffolding of systemic inequality that has shaped the modern world. In the voices of the ancestors...those like W.E.B. Du bois and Fannie Lou Hamer... we find not only condemnation of this falsehood, but also the moral compass and courage needed to dismantle it.
To racialize is to dehumanize. When a dominant group seeks to assert control, it crafts myths to justify its privilege...declaring some human, others sub-human. Racism emerges as the ideology that legitimizes this imbalance, cloaking economic greed and social control in the language of biology and destiny. Race, then, is not born from nature; it is born from need...the need to divide, conquer, and dominate. From the earliest days of colonial America, power dictated classification: who would be free, who would be enslaved, and who would be left behind.
After European settlers took the land from Indigenous peoples, they turned to a more insidious theft — of labor, of life, of Black bodies. Africans were chained and shipped across oceans, not because of any inherent difference, but because their blackness was used to signify inferiority. In 17th century Virginia, white landowners found justification for slavery by declaring Black skin itself a badge of lesser humanity. And so the white race was invented — constructed as the standard, while Blackness was cast as deviant, dangerous, and destined for servitude. This was not nature’s doing. It was politics. It was profit. It was power.
The creation of the so-called white race was not merely about skin tone; it was about securing dominance. Whiteness became a shield — an identity granted not for color, but for compliance with a system built on exclusion.
As Steve Martinot reminds us,
"White identity was formed not in isolation but in direct opposition to Blackness."
It was through the suppression of the Black spirit that the myth of White superiority took shape. And it must be said: one cannot cling to whiteness without simultaneously upholding the lie that others are lesser.
Even the term "Caucasian" bears the fingerprints of flawed anthropology and imperial fantasy. While early humans did migrate from Africa through regions like the Caucasus, this movement did not birth racial categories. Genetic studies reveal that humans share far more similarities than differences.
The notion of race as a biological reality collapses under the weight of science. The spread of lighter skin in colder regions was an adaptation for vitamin D synthesis — not a marker of intellectual or moral superiority. And yet, centuries of pseudoscience and colonial agendas turned evolution’s subtleties into rigid hierarchies.
The Ottoman slave trade introduced Africans into the Caucasus, creating communities like the Afro-Abkhazians. Their presence (largely erased from history) reminds us that human migration, mixing, and identity have always been fluid. Race, as we know it, required a suspension of this truth. It required the rewriting of lineage, the flattening of culture, and the denial of shared humanity. Only then could racial categories become tools of social and economic sorting.
Today, the illusion persists. Racial classifications continue to shape lives...determining access to education, healthcare, housing, and justice. Racism still casts long shadows, not as mere individual prejudice, but as a systemic inheritance. To believe that we are biologically divided by race is to accept a story that was written to uphold inequality. But to reject it is to reclaim our collective humanity.
White identity, as constructed in America, is both fragile and forceful. It asks its adherents to deny the brutality of its formation. Many resist confronting the crimes of white supremacy, not out of malice, but out of fear that reckoning means guilt. But the truth offers liberation.
As James Baldwin wrote,
"People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them."
To break free, one must first renounce the chains. The saying "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity" is not an indictment — it is an invitation.
And the tides may be turning. In recent censuses, increasing numbers of Americans identify as multiracial. This is not just demographic change...it is a defection from whiteness, a refusal to be confined by a label built on exclusion. These individuals are claiming something deeper: a kinship with all of humanity.
Black identity, in contrast, has been forged not in privilege, but in resistance. From the Middle Passage to Tulsa, from Emmett Till to George Floyd, Black people have fought to assert their full humanity in a world that consistently tries to deny it. This identity is not just a reaction to oppression...it is a wellspring of culture, pride, and resilience.
When Amanda Gorman says, "They call me," she is invoking a powerful connection to her ancestors (both biological and symbolic) who have paved the way for her and whose legacy she carries forward. This phrase is part of a personal mantra she recites before performances:
“I am the daughter of Black writers. We’re descended from freedom fighters who broke through chains and changed the world. They call me.”
Her voice carries generations with it...proof that the past speaks through the present.
The question remains: why do we still racialize others? Why do we insist on categorizing, dividing, dehumanizing? Because race, though fictional, serves function. It masks exploitation, excuses inequality, and maintains order — an order born in slavery, upheld by silence. But we are not bound to continue the lie. To see ourselves not as Black, White, or Other, but as fully human, is to begin the long journey toward justice.
We are one species. One breath. One blood. The divisions are drawn not by nature, but by man. And what man has drawn, man can erase. Let us remember that the human story did not begin with conquest, but with connection. And in that spirit, let us write a new chapter..one of truth, reconciliation, and shared destiny.
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