There is no biological basis for what we call race, meaning that most human variation occurs within individual “races” rather than between them. Race is a social fiction. But it is also, for now at least, a social fact.
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If they are willing to make any sort of nod toward the existence of race as a legitimate category, most scientists agree that a person’s race is self-identified, and the U.S. census now categorizes people only as they self-identify. But our racial categories are so closely policed by the culture at large that it would be much more accurate to say that we are collectively identified.
The obvious question—perhaps not to an American, but certainly to a visitor from another planet—is why if someone’s ancestry is predominantly white, they are not identified as “white” rather than “black.” It’s not because of the way they look. Walter White was widely “mistaken” as a white person. As a student at Colgate, Adam Clayton Powell was initially believed to be “white.” But once it became known that they had black ancestry, they became black. And American law backed up this conclusion. In the South, the idea that any black ancestry would qualify someone as black, negro, or colored was called the “one-drop rule.”
[. . . ]
By denying the existence of race, one denies the existence of racial inequality. Yet by using the constructed language of race, one perpetuates invidious racial distinctions. Obama faced this dilemma when he chose how to designate himself on the census. And he may have done the right thing—but only in the short run. If racism is finally to disappear, so must the peculiar logic of blackness.
John Judis in The New Republic.
