Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | New African

What is 'race' and what is 'racism'? Dr Charles Quist-Adade sheds light on the destructive power of race and racism and contends that the twin notions, while illogical and irrational, have real, abiding influence on our collective psyche and continue to wreak havoc globally. Ironically, he writes, "there is no pure 'race' and all groups are 'racially' mixed".

Article Excerpt
"Race" and "racism" paradoxically are different things. One does not exist, at least in the scientific sense. It is a chimera, a phantom. The other is a powerful reality, an invention that is absurd, illogical, irrational, and nonsensical. One is a figment of the collective imagination. The other manifests itself in a destructively powerful way. Yet together the two are interdependent, feeding upon each other.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Yes, the twin notions of race and racism combine to make a powerful concoction, poisoning human relations, maiming, killing, and destroying people everywhere in both hidden and open ways. Sometimes people appear to understand both the absurdity and the power of the twin notions as expressed in the following trite phrases: "Our differences are only skin deep" and "we all belong to the human race".

These two phrases are often invoked across the "colour bar", either to promote racial harmony or to expose the fallacy of racial exclusiveness. The truth in these two observations is beyond contest. Yet the history of the human race suggests that people use these terms without really meaning the idea behind them. So, then, what is "race" and what is "racism"?

"Race" is defined as a grouping of human population characterised by socially selected physical traits. What this definition points to is that "race" is a social construct. In other words, race is neither natural nor biological. Instead the concept was artificially and arbitrarily created by human beings. It also means that "race" is not genetically predetermined or divinely created. In other words, what constitutes race is like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.

How can that be, you wonder. Your eyes do not deceive you. There are indeed physical differences among the human populations we call racial groups--"black", "white", "yellow", etc. A Chinese man is obviously as different from a Portuguese man as an Englishman is from a Nigerian Ibo man. However, what our eyes see as physical differences are only superficial traits, differences brought about by geographic and climatic adaptations.

An Ibo man is darker than an English man simply because he lives in the tropics and is closer to the equator, with plenty of...