Ibram x Kendi said a lot of things in his book I disagreed with, but, one thing I think he has exactly correct is that there is no such thing as “race.” You can’t generalize an entire group as a single race. “African Americans” are a perfect example. Kendi points out that a person from North Africa is often nothing like a person from South Africa. Its ridiculous to group them together as a single identity. And, this is just picking people who came directly from Africa. Once you take into account global migrations and diverse groups getting together and having children, you are left with nothing like a single homogeneous group. Kendi claims that races were created as a source of power. He might be right on that point. Today, we’re taking this concept and broadening it… the phrase used is ‘black and brown people.’ This implies an indigenous decedent of the Mayans in Mexico is somehow homogeneous with Guinness record holding Tutsi tribe in Africa. There is little connecting these 2 groups that doesn’t connect the rest of humanity. Why then group them together as a ‘race’ because of skin tone? We’re heading back down a very unproductive path with this kind of thinking. We should focus on what unites us and our common good, not divided based on a non-existent concept of ‘race.’
