It has never been about “race.”

It doesn’t take a degree in anthropology–which I have–nor a lifelong love of words and the precision of words, which I also have–to make the case that we are all ONE RACE, that there are not multiple races of mankind.

The word is used because it has always been used, but it has always been the wrong word.

The right word isn’t race, it is culture.

It may seem the wrong time to bring this up, to insist on a lesson in language and civics. But this is what makes it especially relevant and important now:

If we call it race then it is a thing based in genetics, in nature over which we have little control, and which by some would be laid at the door of God.

If we call it culture then it derives from purely human origins. And that means we have infinitely more power over it. We don’t have to change nature, or challenge the Divine, we only have to dig in and question our own beliefs and assumptions, our own habitual attitudes and their antecedents.

It’s work… but it’s easier than changing biology.