The 'R' Word

Q: In your book, The ‘R’ Word: Racism and Modern Society, you talk about the possibility of going beyond racism, beyond ideas of race too. What do you mean by that?

A: We have to accept, first, that race doesn’t exist in any meaningful scientific sense. Most people have accepted that. What we’re still left with is cultural racism, that is, that people do still behave differently to other people because of the colour of their skin. In addition to that, black people themselves have become enslaved in the mythologies passed down from history. They need to unchain themselves from that slavery of language.

If I have a student of colour come into my university office, I’m not interested in his or her skin colour. I’m more interested in the quality of their mind, and their ability to apply themselves to a particular problem. If we can create a new cadre of people who get beyond the idea of race defining them, we can get beyond the mentality reproduced by cultural racism. It is a function of imagination. We have to learn to re-imagine ourselves. We have to get to a position where people are not defined by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character and the contribution to the world they want to make.

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