Imagine: Race is Over

It's a new year.

An election year. The end of an era. Soon we will stop being America With It's First Black President. It's a messy ending, marked by what many are calling the New Civil Rights Movement.

I was born during the "old" Civil Rights movement.
I was a black child, raised by a white mother, at a time when no one denied that race mattered. Remnants of Jim Crow were rampant in the South. School desegregation was a bold, new concept. My parents and their peers believed that change was happening, and that it would last.

Progress has been arguably slow.
In the meantime, some scholars deem race an artificial construct. But it's been the basis of prejudice and subjugation here in America since the appearance of the first settlers. It's been at the core of hundreds of years of socio-political-economic imbalance. Race is an age-old system of labels, and in order to disable the system, we have to subvert the semantics.

By the end of 2015, I felt totally overwhelmed by all the talk about race, my own included.
As the holiday season approached, I decided I needed a moment of silence. I opted to stay quiet, and just listen. I've been watching the Supreme Court shake out an affirmative action battle in Texas. I've tracked "White Debt" with Eula Biss, and #BlackLivesMatter with Charles M. Blow and Roxane Gay. I've discussed police training methods with a Maryland-based expert who happens to be my sister. I've been taking it all in, without taking sides. I don't feel personally insulted or offended, nor am I living in daily fear for my wellbeing.

But I do worry about this election.
I am stunned to hear kingpins of the Republican party use hate-speech to rally support. It's top-tier intolerance, anti-American blasphemy. It has to stop.

Back to semantics.
I have the privilege (yes, that word) of being able to say "I'm mixed"; I get to be something other than Black or White. Removing the race labels doesn't change who I am; but because I'm both instead of either, it takes me out of the struggle. I'm not on one side - cue Joni Mitchell - I'm on both sides.

In this new year, I want to recommend that we lose the labels.
Use qualifiers like "My parents come from (fill in the blank)."

See how it feels to just be.