A reader of The Dish writes to Andrew Sullivan that the issue of Critical Race Theory is not challenging the supremacy of whiteness, but “teaching our children that their identity is the most important aspect of their lives.”

Now, in the shadow of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it’s easy to consider what Dr. King himself would have thought of that idea—he famously spoke in the I Have A Dream Speech

of the day “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

But it’s worth asking, why does race loom so large now? Not, why are we finally coming to grips with America’s racist heritage—that’s been coming forever and is welcome. But why the emphasis on race itself as determinative?

After all, there aren’t really white people and black people or generally people of color. There are all kinds of different people with many different pasts and experiences. Certainly, many people identified as white suffer from all sorts of disadvantages that many people of color do not. I don’t mean that as an average, but rather, literally. Poor people have a hard time in America whether white or black. Reifying race is not much different from reifying anything else.

I think the reason that racial identity is so important right now is that we have lost the idea of the universal—that is the ability to think about human beings as one. This used to be called the human condition and it is a great antidote to racism and every other kind of prejudice. We are all one.

Thinking the universal is one more casualty of the Death of God. It was our religions that emphasized humanity. Ironically, the emphasis on humanity did not prevent an appropriate concern for the individual. What it did do was to prevent an emphasis on other, less significant differences among people. Our universal humanity relativizes everything else—race, class, gender, sexual orientation and identity—everything.

Our common humanity is the truly liberal starting point.