To: Thinkingallowed@bbc.co.uk
Re: A time beyond race ?
Date: Friday 31 March 06

Dear Laurie et al. at Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4
 
As you will know from previous emails, unlike you (the cool, disinterested academic), I'm passionately interested in race and identity and the relationship between them, so your interview with Bridget Byrne (of Manchester University) in Wednesday's broadcast was a riveting listen. One thing she said, however, I found rather puzzling:  ". . . . if we want to think of 'a time beyond race' . . " You didn't query it, so I presume that you understood what she meant. I, and perhaps some of your other listeners, would be very interested to know what it was.
 
Our race is determined by who our forebears were (telling us about our roots and our history), so it is hardly surprising that it plays such a central role in determining many (I would think, most) people's sense of identity. So, unless we are seeking to create a society of individuals who are all of more-or-less homogenously mixed race, I do not see how there can ever be "a time beyond race".
 
To me, my ancestors, roots and history (and with them, necessarily, my race) are always going to be of central importance, although as a white man I'm not supposed to feel like this and am under a great deal of pressure to suppress such feelings. No one wants to be accused of "racism", but that is what happens to any one who feels (and dares to express) a sense of white (native European) identity.
 
Rather, we are supposed to feel ashamed of being white, because of colonialism, slavery and all the other terrible things that white men were involved in, not to mention our responsibility for most of the problems, horrors and injustices of the modern world. It is an attitude that we inflict upon ourselves, I suspect, at least in part, as a consequence of our Christian culture, which has imbibed us over centuries with a burden of guilt for "original sin".
 
This is an incredibly interesting, and important, subject - as is the whole, wider question of identity. It was the Nazi's evil exploitation and manipulation of Germans' sense of national and racial identity which resulted in such remarkable achievements (not all bad) and the horrors of WW2 and Auschwitz, but we won't prevent such manipulation and exploitation in future by denying and suppressing such an important natural tendency. Rather, we need to understand it and create social structures that allow us to express, maintain and cultivate it in a humane and civilised fashion, since it is essential for human diversity. Otherwise, a few generations down the line (assuming that we solve the "sustainability problem") our descendents will all be of more-or-less homogenous mixed race and culture - and anything but "diverse".
 

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed