The Human Race

A well-known actress recently made a statement which is truly disturbing in its implications. It seems she felt a need to explain why – by way of what appears to be an apology (to use the words ascribed to her in the article I read) - she is ‘dating outside her race.’ The main-stream media doesn’t appear too bothered by it.

We have a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, we fought an incredibly destructive civil war to ensure that that principal was applied fairly to all, we as a nation have suffered through 150 years of civil strife since that war began, we have suffered through the civil rights movement for nearly 60 years. It seemed we had finally moved beyond such issues as who was dating whom – particularly in Hollywood.

The Declaration of Independence says that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;’ the Constitution provided equal rights to all – and we fought a bloody war to preserve that Constitution and end slavery. We ended slavery (the 13th Amendment) and guaranteed equal access to the law (the 14th Amendment) more than 140 years ago, and we have continued to push the notion of equality ever since.

But somehow men and women should date each other based on, well, in fact, I’m not even sure what. What the heck does race mean anyway? The closest science can get in trying to classify humans by ‘race’ is to classify people by phenotypes, that is, by observable characteristics and traits. If you think that makes sense, try to accurately define the term ‘European’ or for that matter ‘Arab’ when used to define someone ethnically. Irish, Greek, Finish, Romanian, Portuguese – all are ‘European.’ Moroccans, Egyptians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Omanis are all ‘Arabs.’ Are the Berber tribesmen of the Sudan ‘Arabs?’ I’ve heard folks from the Saudi Arabia argue that to be Arab your family has to be from the Arabian Peninsula. Which means Iraqis and Kuwaitis aren’t Arabs. Go figure.

And how accurate is this? And further, who cares? Should we only date people with the same nose? Jaw? Skin color? (That’s a good one: how many skin tones do you see walking down the street? Hundreds, a function of how much melanin you have – genetics – plus how much sun exposure you have had, and your diet and certain possible health issues.) It is worth noting that if you could trace everyone’s lineage back about 40 generations the family tree would reveal that we are all related (maybe there is some remote village in the upper Amazon that has been isolated for 40 generations, but I doubt it.)

Maybe we should date and marry based on shoe size or bowling scores.

‘Some guy’ once said that we should judge people not on the color of their skin but the content of their character. If someone is a wonderful man or woman shouldn’t we want to more closely associate with him or her? And if he or she is a jerk, or believes in things that we believe are wrong, can’t we just call him a jerk and ignore him? Best I can figure, the only ‘race’ that any of us are in is the human race. Let’s start looking at character and forget some of this nonsense.

Who was the guy who said that thing about character anyway? Just some dreamer I suppose.