Where is the postracial society? Mark Kingwell

On identity politics and post-racialism:

Is the solution a “postracial” society, blind to colour and bogus judgments of difference? Would that it were so. Unfortunately, too many comfortable postracialists are self-appointed allies of struggle, who should remember that they don’t get to be not-white just because they have achieved personal tolerance. Demographics alone are an uncertain vehicle of change, and rainbow populations no guarantee of harmony and justice – sometimes quite the opposite.

The presumed liberal goal for diverse societies is universal equality, but identity politics seems compelled to tout essential differences. The best response to this long-standing philosophical double-bind isn’t what Mr. Rock suggested: more opportunity, especially in Hollywood’s tiny self-regarding gene pool. Opportunity is too often a rigged game, another frat mixer where you get stuck in the corner with the other squares.

Instead, we need to challenge the very idea that random differential traits – skin colour, physical beauty, penises – should generate outcomes unrelated to them, such as wealth, power and status. Racism is stupid as well as dangerous, a conceptual error frozen into intellectual sludge. The solution is not more identity but more imagination, including for differences we haven’t yet encountered.

Without that, the postracial society will remain a sci-fi dream, like crew rosters on Star Trek or the bar scenes in Star Wars. And even there – well, we like you, C-3PO, but you’re … not an organic.