To Saletan, the solution lies in looking beyond racial divides and embracing “genetic” diversity. This new framework, he says, would focus on:

“genes that affect mental traits, genes that affect abilities, and variations between populations in the prevalence of these genes. No genetically distinguishable population will be spared. We're sitting in the path of this train, tied to the tracks by a literalist conception of equality that can't accept hereditary differences between group averages. I suggest we free ourselves.”

And who exactly stands to be liberated by this concept? Would advocates for racial justice reject the ideal of a society that judges people purely as individuals, unique and yet equally deserving of dignity? Do they cling to racial categories because they share the fixation of racists on dividing people by color and ethnicity?

Saletan makes some cutting points about how certain race-based policies might perpetuate inequality:

“This is what can happen when you constantly look for racial angles in data on crime, IQ, and other measures of the 'quality of people' You start aiming policies at ethnic groups. But I don't think this kind of racism is a product of uneven distribution. It's a product of bad framing.”

Cleverly, Saletan “frames” his own thesis, for categorizing people in terms of innate ability, as an argument against excessive racialization. But he skirts the reality of racial attitudes as a dynamic force, which impacts, and is shaped by, countless other relationships among people and institutions.

Activists who apply a racial-justice analysis tend not to elevate race as an effective measure of human value. Quite the opposite. They tend to understand race as a social myth, but a powerful one, with real implications for how humans identify themselves and interact with each other. Today, moving society forward requires confronting race as it is, not just as it should be—working through the myriad ways racialized ideas are manipulated and impressed on people to justify inequality. That's when the difference between equality and equity comes into play. And that's the impetus behind organizing people as change agents in their communities. Post-racial? If only.

Image: Wikimedia Commons