I had a 'discussion', recently.

A friend expressed frustration at people who say, "There is only one race - the human race." This friend, and the almost exclusively African-American audience to this discussion, saw it as an indicator that any Black American who said such a thing must have recently spent a lot of time with 'white' people when someone says this.

The inference of this statement is to say that there is no divide between different types of humans called 'race', is false. There is no barrier to procreation as there is between, say, fish and sea mammals, like seals, dolphins or whales.

There is culture. Sure. But race?

After further 'discussion', what I uncovered was a belief that race exists merely because racial ideology is:

• Popularly referenced
• Used as the basis for decisions, openly or secretly, and
• Likely to shape the way others view or treat you, whether you like it or not

Well, so is astrology.

How many times has someone who you hardly know asked, "When is your birthday?"

("Oh, here we go," you say to yourself.)

Depending on how important it is to get along with the person, you offer a date - usually a true one but it doesn't have to be - and the person goes on for 5, 10, 15 minutes about what they allegedly know about you, simply from the day you chose to say that you were born.

Ever had that happen?

Okay. A lot of people do the same with visual cues.

That doesn't make either astrology or race real.

What those belief systems tell you about a person is not necessarily anything to do with who you are, who I am, or who they are. The ideologies behind 'race' are not to be confused with any actual reproductive barrier that separates you from the rest of the human species. Your humanity is something that pre-dates anyone else's discovery or acknowledgement of it. It doesn't only become true when they admit to it or concede it. It's not a diploma that someone hands you. You already have it.

Somehow, we seem to grasp this when debating issues like Columbus Day, or, the arrival of the First Fleet to the shores of Australia.

Today, we dispute it when someone says that they 'discovered' a land that was already occupied by other people. Somewhere along the way, we realized that we were denying the humanity of the original occupants of these lands, and reserving that status of 'human' for those who arrived to award them with that status, on their own time, for their own reasons.

However, the humanity of those people existed in those people WHILE THEY WERE ALIVE.

They didn't only become human AFTER we decided to make the conscious decision to stop describing them as discovered. We might not have understood their language had we been present at the encounter, but they knew what air was, how to cook, dispose of human waste, tell time (although perhaps not by hours), birth and nurse children, understand the importance of avoiding bleeding, drowning, make boats, pick fruit in season, and more.

It wasn't any shift in OUR mindset that made them human. Our shift in mindset was late. They already were human, and so are you. You shouldn't be waiting around for someone else to 'play ball' before you are willing to acknowledge that about yourself.

"But even if I know that, Richard, that STILL isn't going to change my daily experience and the role race plays in it!" some will say.

Yes. It. Will.

In this 'discussion' that I alluded to, earlier, I actually had one person tell me that all I needed to know was that I was 'black.'

So, an astrologer, or a subscriber to astrological beliefs, can describe the entire astrological system. They can tell you all twelve signs of the Zodiac.

They can tell you when one sign starts and when the next sign takes over, based on everyone's date of birth. Accordingly, unless you were born in a country where everyone's date of birth is 1 January (there are several), by their theory, all of humanity, without exception, can be classified within this system. Might not amount to a hill of beans, but, it's a complete theory.

Yet, here is this person telling me that, effectively, "Don't worry about the rest of the 'system' or how it adds up. Just know that this is the part (the 'black' part) is the part that applies to you. Take it from me."

I'm getting to an age where sometimes I forget how clearly and certainly I learned certain lessons. I remember the lesson. I just can't remember when and where I learned it, and why it is so indisputable to me.

It was weeks later that I remembered one of the key events that solidified to me that race is not a thing.

It was an interview. I can't find it. It was Bill Clinton being interviewed by, if I recall correctly, Bill Moyers, who used to do a lot of interviews on PBS. Bill Clinton had only recently met Nelson Mandela, and the interviewer, presumably Moyers, asked him about it. Clinton raved.

He said that he asked Mandela how he could possibly have survived all that had happened to him.

Repeating the conversation, Clinton said, "'They took your house. they took your friends from you. They took your family from you. They took your freedom. They took your dignity. They.....,' and he cut me off right there," Clinton said of Mandela.

"'No,' Mandela said to me,' said Clinton, raising his hand to illustrate how Mandela had cut him off forcefully, 'No one can take your dignity. You have to GIVE them that.'"

It does not matter if the WHOLE WORLD says that 2+2 is 5. You may have to play its game, just to survive. I understand that.

But, when you get to the point where you convince YOURSELF, without prompting from others, that it isn't 4, and that it could never be 4, you have done damage to yourself and you have done so willingly. No one else has a say in what you tell yourself, and especially in what you tell yourself about yourself.

Yes. I have dark brown skin - a rather nice shade if you ask me. However, what more does that lone, single fact go on to tell you about me that you wouldn't have known if you hadn't known my skin color? What, beyond the color of my skin, does knowing the color of my skin tell anyone?

• Does it tell you my education level?
• Whether I'm a folder or a scruncher?
• The last place I went on vacation?
• What foreign languages I know?
• My daughter's middle name and how my wife and I chose it?
• Where I'd like to retire?
• What kind of music I like?
• Or, would further questions still be required to find those things out?

What trustworthy, reliable insight does it ACTUALLY give you? What assumptions can you now make? What does 'race' MEAN about a person?

Conversely, what dreams and hopes and intentions and likes do you sacrifice to your own 'race'? What do you tell yourself, secretly, that you aren't supposed to do, aren't allowed to do, shouldn't like, because of what you think your 'race' requires of you?

See, sometimes it's not other people.

It's often other people. It may even almost always be other people.

There are times, though, when it's just you and that voice in your head, and the only person in your way is you, and how you think of yourself, and even if that's somebody else's fault, going forward, you now know better.

It's not anybody else's decision from here on out.