Ani Fox on Race: Personal, Conflicted, Pointless, Brutal

[Ani Fox]

How does race impact your life, how does it impact society, and how should it impact life/society?

Elizabeth Spellman, a feminist philosopher, talks about people walking through doors in perception – do we walk through gender first, race, sexuality, class? In what order do we judge the people we see. It's been my experience that few people can function socially unless they know the gender of the person they're interacting with. Gender in my opinion, comes first.

But historically race always came second and its schismic power determined whole histories, especially in the United States. Race is a personal thing for me. I study it – my PhD studies boil down to racially motivated genocide studies. Race is a tricky thing for me – I'm a Jew who knows that 2 generations ago my people didn't count as "white" in the US and 4 generations ago didn't count as "human." Race is a conflicted thing for me – I was raised by a spiritual teacher whose American Indian roots were passed on to me culturally. By custom adoption not the heinous blood quantum (what % of you is X) determined your Indianness. Race is pointless to me – I studied enough on it to be aware that fundamentally it does not exist except as a concept in the heads of its perceivers.

Race is a lie, a dangerous brutal illusion that was manufactured to give force to policies of oppression, murder and religious domination. Who built race? In America it was Wealthy White Straight Anglo Saxon Protestant Men – Irish, Italians, Jews, dirty immigrants, etc need not apply. Over time as imperial ambition grew to dominate America 'race' was modified. Whiteness and lack thereof defined the basic essence of our society. Who got to be white, who got to be allowed near whites and who were defined by their diametric opposition to whiteness (thus labeled Black) was a political thing. Class lines which normally divided rich from poor allowed for all forms of White to dominate all forms of Dark.

All that said, try ignoring it for a week. Try pretending it doesn't exist. Try to not care about who is what color, race, ethnicity or culture. If Spellman is right – you won't get far and that is the real tragedy. For 'race' is really a placeholder for the constant unequal and devastatingly brutal hegemony which we build for our ourselves and which we horrifyingly teach our children.