Those who choose to overlook the realities of race and the color line are doing the work of white supremacy.
It’s a genuine and worrisome possibility that once the general public understands how race is a biological fiction, in many ways the struggle for racial equality will actually be made more—and not less—difficult. Of course, a belief in fixed “racial” categories, and that somehow there are distinct racial “phenotypes” which can be ranked, sorted, and graded, has led to much evil and barbarism along the global color line. But a superficial understanding and claim that race is “just” a social construct is extremely dangerous as well.
As reported by the Huffington Post, Bill Clinton validated these concerns when he recently said:
"The other thing I want to make a funny comment about is Steve Cohen's remark that I was just a stand-in for the first black president," Clinton said. "I'm happy to do that, but you know what else we learned from the human genome? We learned that unless your ancestors, every one of you, are 100 percent, 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa, we are all mixed-race people.
"And we learned that from a scientific point of view, if you just look at our genome, we are all 99.5 percent the same," he added. "That is, look around this room here. Every single, solitary difference you can see that is not age-related: skin color, eye color, body shape, gender, race, you name it, every one is rooted in one half of 1 percent of your genome. So the problems of the world today could be summed up as, we spend 99 and a half percent of our time fixating on that half of a percent, and if we spent a little more time fixated on the other 99 and a half percent, we could build a better future together."
Race is a true lie. For centuries, this true lie has overdetermined the life chances and life opportunities in the United States and the West to the advantage of those people categorized as being white, and to the disadvantage of those marked as being non-white.
While the neoliberal nightmare has complicated this dynamic in the United States, the wages of whiteness, both psychological and material, are still very real.
Bill Clinton is correct on a very basic level: Human beings are more alike than different. There are no traits in one racial group which are not present in another racial group.
But that .5 percent of difference can have all the meaning in the world.
If Eric Garner was able to tell the cops that “we are all 99.5 percent the same” would they have released their lethal grip around this throat, preempting his subsequent “I can’t breathe” death rattle?
Can college-educated black men who are applying for jobs tell their prospective employers that “we are all mixed-race people”? Will this prevent black men with no criminal background from being assessed in the same way as a white man with a criminal record?
Will Bill Clinton’s observation that “we learned that unless your ancestors, every one of you, are 100 percent, 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa, we are all mixed-race people” keep résumés with “black-sounding” names from being more poorly assessed relative to those with “white-sounding” names?
Does that .5 percent of difference between racial groups stop police officers from being quicker to shoot black and brown men as compared to whites?
How does Bill Clinton’s suggestion that “if we spent a little more time fixated on the other 99 and a half percent, we could build a better future together" stop America’s police from killing young black men at a rate 21 times that of whites in the same cohort?
Will black, Hispanic, Latino, and Asian-American applicants for mortgages be able to tell racist bank loan officers that “we are all mixed-race people,” and thus be approved to buy a home with the same interest and approval rates as white people who have the same credit profile?
Did the fact that “we are all 99.5 percent the same” save black people like LaQuan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, John Crawford III, Rekia Boyd, Jonathan Ferrell, and Walter Scott from being de facto executed in the street by America’s police and other white-identified vigilantes?
Reflecting on the 17th anniversary of Amadou Diallo’s killing, did New York police officers think about how “we are all 99.5 percent the same” while they shot him 41 times as he tried to show them his wallet?
Does how “every single, solitary difference you can see that is not age-related: skin color, eye color, body shape, gender, race, you name it, every one is rooted in one half of 1 percent of your genome” prevent black children from being much more likely to be expelled or suspended from America’s schools than white children who engaged in the same behavior?
Does the fact that “unless your ancestors, every one of you, are 100 percent, 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa, we are all mixed-race people” do anything to correct extreme levels of residential housing segregation in the United States?
Will Bill Clinton’s suggestion that “the problems of the world today could be summed up as, we spend 99 and a half percent of our time fixating on that half of a percent, and if we spent a little more time fixated on the other 99 and a half percent, we could build a better future together” do anything to correct the extreme racial disparities in wealth and income in the United States?
Did how human beings are “99.5 percent the same” save those many thousands of black and brown men and women who were gobbled up by the greatly expanded maw of the prison industrial complex, and the so-called War on Drugs during the Clinton administration?
Was Bill Clinton thinking “if we spent a little more time fixated on the other 99 and a half percent, we could build a better future together" when he mined white racial resentment and overt racism in his role as a neoliberal “New Democrat” by attacking Sister Souljah and “welfare queens” to win a presidential election in 1992?
Are white Americans reflecting on how “unless your ancestors, every one of you, are 100 percent, 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa, we are all mixed-race people” when they tell public opinion researchers that black people are “lazy,” “less intelligent,” and not as “hard-working” as white people?
Toni Morrison described Bill Clinton as “America’s first black president.” Her observation was misunderstood. It was not a compliment. Morrison’s claim was actually a sharp barb that called attention to the double standards of the color line in America. She would later explain how:
People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.
Morrison’s insight is also a witty double turn of phrase, because if Bill Clinton was in fact really black his post-presidential career would be in shambles. He would have been driven out of the public square as a result of his sexual liaisons with Monica Lewinsky.
“Liberal racism” is real, and it takes many forms. In the post-civil rights era and the Age of Obama, one of the most noxious manifestations of liberal racism is the notion that we are “all the same beneath the skin,” and thus, to talk about racial difference and the divergences in life chances along the color line is somehow impolitic or racist.
“Radical” humanism that overlooks race is empty. This particular type of humanism is neither truly radical nor transgressive, because it leaves racial inequality in place by pretending not to see it.
In all, so-called racial colorblindness protects white privilege and does the work of white supremacy. And yes, racial colorblindness sometimes does said work via the white racial logic of ostensibly “liberal” and “progressive” statements such as Bill Clinton’s: “We are all 99.5 percent the same.”
