O. J.'s blood (or was it?) appeared to be the only question in the trial of O. J. Simpson. Media, frustrated with low-tech legal processes, fixated on DNA. In the end, the jury appeared concerned with other blood that emerged from police testimony, bad blood between races. O. J.'s acquittal appeared to have more to do with racial than individual blood.

It is no secret that blacks and whites live in different worlds in this country, under what pretends to be a unitary state. Legalized race disparity is obvious in rates of incarceration and execution, access to lawyers, length of sentences, etc. Louis Farrakhan took the pulse of this racism and called for the Million Man March on Washington, D.C. The gathering demonstrated deep awareness among blacks of the racial divide in this society. The President of the United States and most other white workers in Washington stayed away from the city on that day, testimony to whites' deep fear of this divide.

The situation is more complex than institutionalized racism. The fact that blacks and whites are in separate worlds is intertwined with the fact that blacks and whites alike are mixed-blood people. This is the irony of race inequality: blood purity myths are sustained among mixed-bloods. Humanity is a mixed-blood species. Racism is a lie told within this truth.

Take a look at some blood myths:

1. Black blood is very strong; a few drops are sufficient to override all other genetic input, rendering a person black even when only a small fraction of that person's racial mixture is black; the octoroons of American slavery were examples of the mythical power of black blood to overcome white; white male slave-owners utilized the possibilities of such equations to increase their property through intercourse with it, augmenting capital through capital's labor-pains.

2. Red blood, the blood of natives in America, is comparatively weak in relation to white; a single dose of white blood is sufficient to transform the bearer into a half-breed; one or two more doses of white injected into the genetic stream render progeny wholly beyond the pale (to turn a phrase); blood-quantum standards for government definition of Indian identity persist to this day, utilizing this myth to dismember tribal communities and remove property from native control.

3. White blood is perhaps the most mythical of all; its purity and strength, though powerful in relation to "native" blood, are vulnerable to virtually all others, and must be violently protected from mixture; the rarest form of white blood is blue, a type of divine origin preserved in a select caste of property-owners; white persons of inferior blood conquered the power of blue-bloods by killing the bearers, and found that superior power can coalesce around new blood.

Myths of blood are quasi-biological ideologies: ideology wrapped in genetics, purveyed as clothing for the emperor. Racism is politics parading in a guise of nature and natural law. Bosnia or Los Angeles, colonialism and slavery cannot be understood otherwise. "Ethnic minorities" are socially constructed categories, separating one mixture of humanity from another by an ideology of blood. Mixed-blood humanity is sick with racial metaphysics.

In the United States, "minorities" is a word for "people of color." But the fact is that a majority of the world's peoples are "colored." An accurate definition of "people of color" in the United States is "representatives of the majority" of humankind.

"Race" distorts political processes, with factions of each "racial minority" vying to represent the group. Organizational energy is diverted from a larger political arena into unresolvable squabbles that hobble leadership and group action. "Minority-group" politics works as a "divide and conquer" strategy within as well as between groups.

Analysis of "minority-group" politics shows how it serves as a mask for a real minority: property-owners. As Baran and Sweezy pointed out years ago:

... the governmental institutions which have taken shape in the United States have been heavily weighted on the side of protecting the rights and privileges of minorities: the property-owning minority as a whole against the people, and various groups of property-owners against each other. [1966, 158]

Law may allow space for dismantling "race" theory. In a naturalization case at the turn of this century, a federal judge admitted four Armenians to United States citizenship, over objection of the federal government that the petitioners were not "white." After extensive analysis of history and statutes, the judge said:

We find, then, that there is no European or white race, as the United States contends, and no Asiatic or yellow race which includes substantially all the people of Asia; that the mixture of races in western Asia for the last 25 centuries raises doubt if its individual inhabitants can be classified by race.... We find, further, that the word "white" has generally been used in the federal and in the state statutes, in the publications of the United States, and in its classification of its inhabitants, to include all persons not otherwise classified.... [In Re Halladjian 1909, 845]

The judge saw white privilege as it is: an historical construct, rooted in politics, not biology. The government also argued that "white" referred not to "race" but to "the prevailing ideals, standards, and aspirations of the people of Europe." [837]

It may be useful to view "white" as a state of mind, a set of attitudes, and not a color. This would help explain how infusion of "non-white" people into "white" institutions fails to substantially alter those institutions. "White" rationality can be sustained by minds in any color body. Colonial puppet regimes (not to mention appointments to the Supreme Court) rely on this fact. The other side of the coin is the way in which "white" institutions have been able to whitewash their "colored" origins. As the Halladjian judge also said:

... a reasonable modesty may well remind Europeans that the origin of their letters was in Phoenicia, the origin of much of their art in Egypt, that Asia Minor claimed, at least, the birthplace of the first great European poet, and that the Christian religion, which most Europeans believe to have influenced their civilization and ideals, was born in Palestine. [840]

I conclude that we will overcome racism only to the extent that we see how the concept of "race" has been developed as a tool for oppression. I believe racism cannot be overcome by "progressive" deployment of racial categories. Race used for such "positive" purposes as affirmation of group pride perpetuates the masking of political history with pseudo-biology. The danger of "racial pride" is not that it may fail to raise people's self-esteem, but that it may build such esteem on a foundation as false as was used to deny it.

I also suggest that continued linkage of "progressive" politics with "minority rights" is problematic. On one hand, when applied to issues of skin color, this linkage misses the mixed-blood truth of humanity's blood stream. On the other hand, the linkage misses the fundamental purpose of "minority rights" -- to protect economic inequality in capitalism.

Our potential to eliminate racism increases when we abandon the rhetoric of minority rights and raise the banner of human freedom. When we experience unity in a diversity of human colors, we will be able to see political exploitation of our differences for what it is: politics, not biology.

REFERENCES

Baran, P. A. and Sweezy, P. M. 1966. Monopoly Capital. New York: Modern Reader.

In Re Halladjian, et al. 1909. 174 Federal Reporter 834.