To: letters@guardian.co.uk
Re: Race and our super-extended family

Date: Saturday, 16 April 05

 
Dear Martin (Mr Jacques),
 
In response to your comment in today's Guardian: "The Middle Kingdom mentality".

What is my race if not my super-extended family (the people, past and present, I most closely relate - and am related - to)?

 
Skin colour is just a genetic marker, but to maintain that it doesn't (or shouldn't matter), is saying that it doesn't matter who your parents and ancestors are. It may not matter to you, but it certainly matters to me, and to a great many other people, as well - of all races.
 
I don't think of my family (or race) as being superior to other families (or races), but because it is MY family (race) it is of special importance to me. These are the people I identify with and care most about. I am strongly prejudiced in their favour, but do not think that this makes me "racist". Although some people - and you may be one of them - seem to think that it does.
 
It seems to me that they (you?) have made a kind of religion, a new "faith", of "anti-racism", condemning all those who do not share your beliefs and feelings as non-believers, i.e. "racists" (creating for yourselves a convenient niche in the socio-economic environment). I'm not defending those who are offensive (let alone aggressive) towards people of different race. When members of my race do that I'm ashamed for them. But the feelings that cause it go very deep and relate to a threatened sense of identity. Branding them as "racist" is misguided, resulting in suppression rather than resolution, which requires retaining (and cultivating) a sense of one's own ethnic identity without the need to put down others.
 
I am an ethnic European and as such have much to be proud and ashamed of. I'm not Black, Asian, Chinese, Japanese, or any of the other 1001 races which populate our planet.
 
But you cannot define race, you object. True. But there are many important things - the most essential amongst them - that cannot be defined: love and truth, for example. Being a white man, a European, is an essential part of my and many other people's identity. Do others not also have a sense of racial identity? Many black people certainly do.
 
Race is important and matters - certainly to most people - as an essential component of their identity, so I suggest you look up the word "racism" in your dictionary and stop applying it where it is not appropriate.