“Let us have the courage of our admitted ignorance, of our doubts and uncertainties. At least we can try to discover what others… require, by… making it possible for ourselves to know men as they truly are, by listening to them carefully and sympathetically, and understanding them and their lives and their needs…” – Isaiah Berlin, Political Theorist

There’s an old political philosophy called “pluralism”. Basically, it’s a condition in society where many groups can live together peacefully and have representation in government with the intention of serving the common good; not the “common good” that serves one group, but the common good that serves all groups. There are many examples of pluralist societies across history. Most were disrupted and destroyed by movements of extremism, ethnic nationalism, and ideological purity. The United States has evolved to become a version of a pluralist society and, despite it’s failures and polarizations, it continues to limp forward in this vein.

Pluralism is an interesting concept in a place where our ethnicities are erased and cataloged using systems of skin color. Wherever we arrived from, or for those who were displaced across their native land – this continent – we were required to replace our ethnic origins with a color. We still do this.

Enshrined in an American contract – a constitution; a declaration for independence – America seems to aspire to erase differences; pluralism. Hallowed concepts like ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’ rest on an understanding of sameness for a specific group of 18^th Century white landowners… because they’re all alike. But, the truth is, the United States has always been a place teeming with diversity. What would happen if we abandoned our skin-color system and embraced our ethnicity instead?

In their book, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life doctors Barbara J. Fields and Karen E. Fields write, “Race is not an idea but an ideology.” They make a specific point in describing the invention of race as something created during the Revolutionary War era by white people who both supported slavery and opposed it. Race ideology was used on both pro- and abolition sides of the human trafficking argument to yoke people with dehumanizing racism. The Fields sisters continue, “…we ought to begin by restoring to race – that is, the American version of race – its proper history.”

Professors at Columbia and Duke Universities, the Fields sisters have expertly managed students acculturated with America’s skin-color classification system. Recently exposed to the lie of race, students will ask what language to use when describing differences in our society. The Fields’ response: “Why not ‘ancestry,’ if that’s what you’re talking about?” They continue, “’Race’ too often recommends itself as a guiltless word, a neutral term for an empirical fact. It is not. Race appears to be a neutral description of reality because of the race-racism evasion, through which immoral acts of discrimination disappear, and then reappear camouflaged as the victim’s alleged difference.”

And so this skin-color system – race; racism – exists in disguised opposition to pluralism. Armed with terminology for skin color, American vernacular appears to represent plurality when, in fact, its origins are a racial ideology that means discrimination. Does this mean we must abandon our codified skin-color systems in order to achieve a more plural society?

I think so. But we need to dismantle systems of white-supremacy and white-identity first. To do this, we can begin by learning about our land and ourselves; who we are in relationship to our history with this continent and it’s laws. I also believe that those of us classified as “white” have some heavy lifting to do in order to dismantle systemic/individual racism.

First, let us all begin by learning about our land; the land we walk on every day for leisure or on our way to school or work. The land is a witness to everything that transpires on it. Let us locate the history and stories of the land where we live and ask ourselves – who am I in relationship with this land today?

Second, let’s embark on something called “Ethnoautobiography”. Dr. Jűrgen W. Kremer published a paper in 2003 called “Ethnoautobiography as Practice of Radical Presence”. Kremer’s work can be a useful guidepost for descendants of people whose ethnic roots and movements of migration, deportation or being trafficked are erased by America’s lore and systems. While Kremer’s approach targets Americans in a “white” acculturation who often attempt cultural appropriation in their confusion to connect with something beyond a skin-color identifier, the activity of an Ethnoautobiography is great practice for everyone. It’s a way to account for lost ethnicities and generational and historical trauma as we examine the truth of our inheritance as Americans.

Third, there’s an extra responsibility for Americans who are classified “white”. I appreciate Kremer’s paper on Ethnoautobiography as a way to decolonize the “colonized” mind. But I believe that people acculturated by “white” identity need to take an extra step in locating our family’s story with racism. In the interest of the ‘ethnoautobiography’, white Americans who want to commit to a robust, pluralist future in America, simply have to uncover our stories with racism. I call this effort a “Racism-autobiography”. It’s where we locate and record our families’ story of racist activities, behaviors, and beliefs. The purpose for this accounting is to acknowledge and accept our inheritance under systems of white-supremacy. Many of us are not descended from slavers, human traffickers, or klansmen. But we have all benefited from the protections and opportunities of America’s financial sectors, spaces of trade and commerce, protections by law, and access to land or education. So even when we can say that an ancestor didn’t own slaves or even when an ancestor was an abolitionist, our skin color today has been codified for protection and opportunity.

Oftentimes, there is a paralyzing shame or embarrassment in “white” spaces when there’s talk of differences – this is part of our acculturation with white-supremacy thinking. We ascribe to an erasure of difference through skin color as if, in the Fields sisters’ words – race were neutral. But in us, when the shame of white-supremacy is felt, this is not a place to be galvanized by the truth of our inheritance. Recognize that the ultimate crime of racism has been its codification – the laws. And because it is our laws that are responsible for protecting and encouraging our historic violence, it is our laws – our government – that carry the urgent responsibility to repair the damage.

Do not be galvanized by the shame as you uncover your family’s racism-autobiography. Instead, take action to change America’s laws to extend deep and lasting reparations to all peoples impacted by the long reach of white-supremacy and the lie of “race”. Reparations are required. The act of reparation is deeply connected in our ethnic origins – our ancient ancestors practiced reparations; and, one day when the majority supports reparations, we will find that they are, in fact, not difficult to identify or administer.

I opened this essay with an insight from Dr. Isaiah Berlin because of the humility present when he describes pluralism. He says, “Let us have the courage of our admitted ignorance, of our doubts and uncertainties…” Entrenched in racial ideology, is a condition of static certainty – as the old saying goes, everything is Black or White. But pluralism springs from a place in the human heart where we don’t always have answers and where curiosity can be our guide toward a robust, pluralist future; a future where we find out who we are meant to be beyond the codification of skin color. These ideas sound rosy and inspiring but when we pair the work of an open heart with learning about our land, our ethnic story, and our histories with racism, pluralism will flourish and reparations will be a first act in a new chapter for America.