Is America obsessed with race?  Is the world obsessed with race?  Have humans been obsessed with race ever since hominoids divided into tribes?  Do government racial classifications worsen the obsession?   Is it foolhardy to write about race?  Am I a fool?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.  

In addition to being a fool, I'm a swart.

What's that? 

"Swart" is short for "swarthy."  It's derived from the Old English "sweart," which meant black or dark. 

Swart is one of the derogatory words that have been used to denigrate Italians over the years, along with wop, dago and greaser.  For example, Time Magazine in 1927 described Italian aviator Francesco de Pinedo as a swart.  That's mild compared to what Life Magazine would say eleven years later about Italians in a cover story on baseball great Joe DiMaggio. The magazine said that DiMaggio wasn't a typical Italian, because he didn't reek of garlic and didn't put olive oil and bear grease in his hair.

Racial slurs were the least of it.  Restrictive covenants were written to keep Italians out of certain WASP neighborhoods, and the children of Italians who immigrated to the Deep South sometimes were restricted to black schools. And when Bart Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco were being railroaded on murder charges in 1921 by a biased WASP judge and jury in a trial that got worldwide condemnation, the New York Times wrote in an editorial that it was "perhaps hopeless to think of civilizing [Italians] or keeping them in order, except by the arm of the law."  (This myth of inbred criminality was counter to the fact that in terms of imprisonment rates, Italians ranked twelfth out of seventeen nationalities.)

Incidentally, the trial took place in Boston, a town in a state represented by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, in keeping with the tradition of the place, is obsessed with race.  We'll return to her later.

Now the race mongers in universities and other mental institutions classify me and other Italians as white, which is used today as a derogatory term, especially when modified by the adjective "privileged."  With no change in DNA, we've magically gone from swart to white and from minority status to majority status, although we're only six percent of the population.

Jews have experienced a similar labeling change.  They've gone from kike to white; that is, from one racial slur to another.  Actually, they are Semite, not white, but today's racial labels have nothing to do with biological accuracy.  They have to do with politics, which in turn has to do with human tribalism, envy, greed, self-interest, stupidity, and, more and more, with a racial spoils system in government and academia.

It's old news that Jews were once discriminated against by the Ivy League, which imposed higher admission standards on them to keep them from being admitted on merit in higher percentages than white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.  It's newer news that Asians have replaced Jews as the targets of Ivy League discrimination.

To pour siracha sauce in the wound, the paragons of social justice and racial sensitivity in universities—the same ones who burp about cultural appropriation—conduct one of the biggest cultural appropriations in history by obliterating the identities of all the unique races, ethnic groups and nationalities in Asia and the sub-continent, by applying the catchall label of "Asian" to them and then setting a quota for this entire artificial group.  To these geniuses, a Korean is the same as a Japanese, is the same as an East Indian, is the same as a Cantonese, is the same as a Filipino, and so on.  (Is it because they have hooded eyes in common?)  Worse, the media, K-12 schools, employers, and most of the masses go along with this insensitive and totally unnecessary racial grouping, thus showing how easy it is to transform otherwise thoughtful people into unthinking moo-cow herds. 

The "Hispanic" label is just as insensitive, and confusing.  Take a black Cuban with no Spanish blood who speaks Spanish.  Is that person black or Hispanic?  Or take a Mexican of 100% Spanish blood.  Is that person a privileged white or a Hispanic?  Or take a Guatemalan with no Spanish blood but 100% Native-American blood.  Is that person Hispanic or Native American?

Maybe Senator Elizabeth Warren knows the answer to the last question, because she's an expert in DNA and is proud that some distant European ancestor of hers mixed chromosomes with a Native American, so that she is one one-thousandth Native American, or whatever the percentage is.

In a similar vein, a commercial for the Ancestry DNA test shows a guy who is overjoyed to discover that he is part Cherokee (as if a DNA test can identify Cherokee genes).   That would be akin to me being overjoyed to get a DNA confirmation that I'm a descendant of one of the peoples that conquered, crisscrossed, and mixed genes on the Italian peninsula over the millennia, including North Africans, Arabs, Persians, Semites, Greeks, Germans, Normans, and French.  Why should I take joy in having any of these genes, given that all these peoples, like all peoples throughout human history, had done awful things to their fellow human beings in the name of their tribe, religion, race, emperor, king, or state?

Likewise, why should Elizabeth Warren care that she has Native-American blood, unless she has the political motive of appealing to ignoramuses who think native peoples were peaceful, kind, loving, and enlightened before Europeans arrived and brutalized and subjugated them?  Actually, of course, most Native Americans had brutalized and subjugated each other long before Columbus and William Bradford landed in the Americas. There were exceptions, but most tribes inflicted ghastly tortures on their enemies, such as cutting out the hearts and cutting off the genitals of men while alive; or cutting open pregnant women while alive to remove the unborn, which were then smashed against trees; or raping and enslaving nubile women.

The Comanche were even more brutal.  Imagine what North America would be like if they instead of Europeans had conquered the land.  For sure, one of the tribes I admire, the Navajos, wouldn't be around today. 

This is in no way to suggest that what settlers did to Native Americans was other than morally wrong or that we shouldn't be embarrassed by the horrible conditions on most Indian reservations.  It's just to state what should be obvious but isn't obvious to the unlearned:  that there is more to history than the politically-correct claptrap taught in K-16. 

While we're engaging in racial heresy, let's imagine what the American Southwest and California would be like if the USA had not taken a turn to imperialism by instigating and winning the War with Mexico. These parts of North America would be suffering from a legacy of traditional Spanish (a k a Hispanic) rule instead of prospering from Anglo-Saxon rule based on Enlightenment values.  They would be similar to most countries in Central and South America, which suffer from a corrupt one-party government and a two-class society, consisting of a powerful, privileged elite at the top, a permanent underclass at the bottom, and a tiny middle class in between.  Yet dolts on college campuses rail against white privilege but not Hispanic privilege—or, for that matter, Arab sheik privilege, Chinese Communist party privilege, Iranian mullah privilege, Ivy League privilege, government employee privilege, or any of the other truly privileged in the world.

If this is higher learning, what is lower learning?

Geneticists say that other than physical features and a susceptibility to certain diseases, there are not significant genetic differences between races.  Differences between races in terms of academic achievement, industriousness, criminality and other bad and good behaviors come from cultural influences, socioeconomic factors, and even environmental and dietary causes, but not genetics.  If this is true—and I believe it is—then why the obsession with race and the popularity of such DNA testing services as Ancestry?  If all races are the same where it counts, then why care what race you are or what other people are? 

Note:  What geneticists say about race seems contradictory to this layman.  On the one hand, they say that genes can explain differences in physical features between races.  On the other, they say that genes cannot explain differences in cognitive skills and certain behaviors between races.  This seem contradictory because physical differences can lead to cognitive and behavioral differences.  If, for example, Italians were to have genetic physical difference in the size of the part of the brain that controls impulsiveness or were to have a genetic hormonal imbalance that results in too much testosterone, the impulsiveness might make it difficult for them to apply themselves in school, and the testosterone might lead to aggressiveness and violence—or to me being impulsive and ballsy enough to raise questions about race that will get me in trouble.  

Putting genetics aside, the fact is that the human obsession with race is an evolutionary trait that, like most evolutionary traits, was a survival mechanism, a way of immediately determining whether someone was from the same or different tribe and thus friend or foe. 

I'm no different.  If, for example, I didn't know who Elizabeth Warren was and saw her in a supermarket, I'd immediately discern by her schoolmarm appearance and whiny voice that she was a foe and not someone with whom I'd want to mix my chromosomes—and vice versa, no doubt.   

When socioeconomic class is added to the mix, wariness and biases increase.   Thus, Trumpers are seen by the bicoastal intelligentsia as deplorables and bitter clingers, while the likes of Elizabeth Warren are seen by Trumpers as sniveling do-gooders who do bad by engaging in identity politics.  At the same time, I'm seen as a privileged white by the inmates of universities, who espouse diversity and social justice but are actually obsessed with race and class.   

The U.S. government increases racial divisiveness with its racial categories.  But instead of doing away with them as some countries have done, government racial bean counters, who count white navy beans separately from refried beans and black-eyed peas, are thinking of adding a new category of Middle Eastern, or hummus, which will lump together widely diverse peoples who only have one thing in common:  swarthiness.

I welcome them to my tribe.