What Is a “Race” In America Anyway?

Elizabeth Warren

Senator Elizabeth Warren permanently squandered much of my support last week. Her publication of a genetic breakdown “proving” her Native American heritage uncovered two massive flaws. First, it it demonstrated her vulnerability to Donald Trump’s “whataboutism” and his desire to distract Americans from important issues. It also reveals an essentialist thinking that plagues not only her, but White Americans generally.

Essentialism is the assumption that something subtle, ethereal, and transcendent, lies beneath all forms of reality. Philosopher David Livingstone Smith draws a fundamental example from humanity itself: any definition of “human” necessarily leaves something important out. Bipedal? Some humans can’t walk, or lose their legs. Sentient? Not everybody. Yet we know a human being when we see one. An intangible human essence binds us all together.

I have no problem with this essentialism. Sometimes it’s necessary to hold everything stable: when, for instance, White Nationalist groups define humanity in ways that exclude certain people from human rights protections, this human essence gives our counter-argument important legs. However, when this essence calcifies, freezing humanity—or whatever we’re discussing—in one place, it becomes burdensome, not defining.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes elsewhere that when essences become inflexible, they become an impediment to understanding. He uses the example of a rabbit. Multiple rabbit species and subspecies exist, but we understand them as all “rabbits” because we see their common essence. But when that essence becomes not a description, but a definition, we stop seeing each rabbit individually. We cannot perceive evolution, because evolution drifts away from the essence.

Richard Dawkins

Writing in The Republic, Plato postulated 2,400 years ago that the reality we see doesn’t really exist. It’s a mere shadow of a perfect world, where everything is clearly defined, every class is reliable, and every individual is perfect to its group. The concept of “chair” doesn’t refer to the British throne, a mass-manufactured La-Z-Boy recliner, and the chairs I build from pallet wood; every chair, in the real world, is a perfect expression of the chair concept.

Except Plato assumes all things real objectively exist. A “chair” can only be perfect if the chair concept precedes humans, which it cannot, because chairs are designed for the posture in which human beings sit down. If our bodies differed, so would our chairs. Therefore there cannot be a perfect chair anywhere.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t a chair essence. We can recognize the similarities in design, shape, and use between my handmade chairs and the British throne. But that essence exists inside us, and not, as Plato believes, outside the universe. The human capacity for seeing patterns and making meaning, drives the similarity between different kinds of chairs, like the similarity between different kinds of humans.

Senator Warren has accepted the belief that the difference between human racial groups is innate. I can imagine no other explanation for her insistence that her genetic profile defines her Native American ancestry. As sociologist Richard J. Perry writes, races aren’t distinct enough to have unique genetic profiles; the geneticists promising to tell you who you really are, can only identify certain patterns, all of which are subjective and contingent.

Just as the essence of “chair” comes from our perceptions, not from the chair itself, the essence of “race” comes from how we treat one another. Like many White people born in Oklahoma, it’s completely feasible that Senator Warren has some Native American blood quantum. Most Americans are, to some degree, genetically mixed. But unless somebody actually treated Senator Warren as Native American, that isn’t part of her identity.

David Livinsgstone Smith

Remember that genotyping TV ad where the guy concludes by saying “I traded my lederhosen for a kilt”? I’ve always wondered whether that dumbass really believes he can trade his learned identity for another. Population groups historically moved widely throughout Europe, indeed throughout the world. The guy thought he was pure German, but found genetic markers consistent with Scotland, for whatever that’s worth. But have there ever been pure Germans anywhere?

That’s the danger being peddled by for-profit geneticists today. They preach a fixed and intangible essence, a human nature that does not change. While they may preach some commercially acceptable form of human inclusion, they ultimately say that your genes define your identity immutably. Which is the foundation of racism.

I’m not calling Senator Warren racist. She still has time to back away. But I’m saying she stands at the head of a slippery slope and gives it credence by calling it another name. Race is a man-made concept, and as Ibram Kendi points out, it’s made to convenience other people’s economic demands. And Senator Warren cannot plausibly preach economic fairness while lending credence to other people’s false strata.