Because "Race" IS The Problem
Most people will gloss right over the title because they think it says "racism" is the problem. That is not at all what it says and having been at this for many years now and having listened to many people from social to clinical psychologists and from civil rights activists to best-selling authors, the argument is which came first, "race" or "racism."
To me it's pretty simple to understand by using our basic principles of grammatical construction. The root word in this case is "race" from which you derive the term "racism." Those opposed to this view believe that because of "racism" in the hearts and minds of those who wanted to subjugate or deprive a people group, namely the slaves in America, "race" was created. It is a semantical argument but a very important one because the answer will determine the viability of offered solutions and as you can tell, to this point in our history, none has worked fully.
This is what deems my solution completely different than those who simply plea to stop "racism." I propose that "racism" is merely a symptom of the problem and that "race" is the problem. The history behind the creation of "race" is what is important for us to understand and without the details of the last 300 years, suffice it to say, there was no such thing as "black" and "white" people prior to slavery in America. However, once afforded the opportunity to enlist free labor for the production of American agriculture, the concept of "race" was used as justification for not only moving African slaves from indentured servitude into chattel slavery. but also creating the hierarchy that allowed lower class Europeans to be elevated above the African slaves. This is the concept still at play today when we talk about "race." It is not only the grouping of people based on skin color, but it also carries the hierarchical structure that puts one group at the top, another at the bottom and all others somewhere in between. The "race" structure must be destroyed and with it the "racial" jargon and terminology that was created to prop up the construct.
Terms like "black" and "white" to describe people, churches, businesses and the like are surely holdovers from the Jim Crow era when this was legally authorized and mandated, but in case you might not have noticed, we are no longer in the Jim Crow era. Why still use that terminology? We've added "race" sub concepts like "white" privilege, "white" fragility, cultural appropriation and many other things you can't say if you're a certain skin color less you be accused of being "racist" or on the other side, an "uncle tom." It's out of control. So what's the answer?
We must get rid of the concept of "race." It is an illusion and was never designed to simply group people but instead to create a divide between people groups and as you can tell, it has worked well at doing just that. So while you will hear many voices now as you have heard in the past fighting against "racism" which is merely a symptom of the disease of "race," we must decide now if we want to continue for another 155 years in this cyclical pattern or if we want to GET OUT of the "racial" paradigm because "race" IS the problem.
