What’s Race Got to Do with It?

The word “race” divides us—primarily according to skin colour and secondarily according to ethnicity. While the concept of race lacks a biological basis, categorization by race continues to shape relations within societies, particularly in those countries where slavery was a central institution for centuries or where settlement involved the displacement of large numbers of indigenous peoples. For example, because of the legacy of slavery, the racial division between African Americans and white Americans is the single most important theme in the national narrative of the United States. In his famous speech on race in March 2008 in Philadelphia, Barack Obama said it was time for America to confront the accumulated anger, resentments, stereotypes and distortions in order to get beyond the race divide. Only then, he said, would it be possible to fix the most broken parts of American public policy, including health care.

I suspect that this connection between race and...