SCLC and Tarrant County, TX Chastized for Use of the "R" Word

In FORT WORTH, TEXAS, "The Southern Christian Leadership Conference cordially invite leaders to lunch with Sister Joyce James, Associate Deputy Executive Commissioner for the Center for Elimination of Disproportionality and Disparities at the Texas Health and Human Service Commission."  The invitation to the meeting asks the question, "Can We Undo Racism?"  The meeting is also intended to "increase efforts to improve racial disproportionality in Texas."

One way to overcome "racism" in Texas is by no longer using a word that insinuates that whites and Blacks and Latinos are from separate and different "races."  We are not from separate "races."  We are all members of the same human species. 

Therefore it is not possible for people to discriminate against us on the basis of "race" because "race," itself, as a matter of genomic science, simply does not exist, according to the US Department of Energy's Human Genome Project.

Anti-discrimination laws have long recognized that we can be discriminated against on the basis of "imputed race.  In these cases, people believe the victim is of another race when, in fact, all humans are from the same species.  It is insulting to use vocabulary that implies otherwise.

Skin color and skin color groups obviously exist and have been the basis for discrimination and the deprivation of rights and liberty.  But differences in skin color do not create separate "races" in the realm of biology.  It is time we allowed the anachronistic and humiliating word "race" fall into the garbage bin of historical misconceptions.  Ironically, the more you use the word "racism," the more you lend support to the unscientific and offensive belief that we are from separate "races."

There are no separate "races."  When we accept that we are all of the same species, then we will be intellectually much closer to overcoming discrimination on the basis of skin color and skin color group. 

Unquestionably, the ubiquitous use of the terms "race" and "racism" and "racist" underscore and lend credence to the preposterous idea that separate races ever existed in the first place.  The belief that there are separate "races" helps to perpetuate systemic and individual color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior. 

In 2008, we did not elect a President of a different "race."  We did not elect a "biracial" President.  We elected a president of a different skin color when compared to the skin color of the Presidents who precede him.  We elected a president whose parents were a hetero-chromatic couple, of different skin colors.  Where the word "race" tries to separate us into different species, with no basis in science, the alternative term "skin color" acknowledges the obvious.  America and the entire world have populations with a broad array of skin colors.  But, "race" does not exist on the basis of skin color or on any other basis.