*What do you believe is necessary for true racial reconciliation to take place in American society?
*Does your solution involve coercive governmental remedies?
*Do you believe that Churches have an important role to play in this process?

This is the Homespun Bloggers‘ question posed by Marc at Hubs and Spokes this week.

My answer is fairly simple. I don’t think we’ll ever have “true racial reconciliation” until we lose the useless concept of “race” altogether. The word is essentially meaningless. I looked it up in the dictionary and got this definition:

1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage. 4. Humans considered as a group.

A more or less distinct group? A group of people classified together? Humans considered as a group? Well, that’s as clear as mud. My race is Baptist, I guess. Or if we’re talking about physical characteristics, then I’m a member of the short race.
The government and churches can both help in this process by refusing to classify people by physical characteristics, except for the obvious male/female classification. That’s the only meaningful or useful physical distinction that I can see between different kinds of people. When asked for my ‘race” on forms, I write “human.” And I teach my children to treat all people as humans.

This is not just a semantic discussion. As long as we continue to classify people by skin color, even with the best of intentions, we say that there is some essential meaning to “being Asian” or “African” or “Hispanic” other than country of origin or ancestral origin. And we tacitly continue to perpetuate the myth that dark-skinned people are somehow different from light skinned people. Middle Earth (a fictional place) had races: dwarves, humans, elves, and hobbits, among others. These groups were different kinds of beings with essential diffenences that went way beyond skin color. In our world, there are only humans. The sooner we all learn that fact the better. After that, we can begin to discuss cultural differences between people of different backgrounds and how those can be bridged, understood, or tolerated.