By Michael Hancock | Commentary, Undercurrent Substack
How racial ideology obscures the true nature of humanity—and turns one human family against itself
There are no different races of human beings.
There is one human race.
There are different ethnicities, cultures, nationalities, bloodlines, languages, and shades of skin. These distinctions are real. But they do not divide mankind into separate categories of humanity. They do not tell us who is intelligent, who is honest, who is courageous, who is compassionate, or who is evil.
Skin color is an attribute. It is not an identity. Certainly not a moral one.
Yet much of modern political thought begins with the opposite proposition. It assumes that humanity is divided into distinct racial blocs, each carrying its own collective history, interests, privileges, wounds, guilt and moral status.
That proposition is not merely mistaken. It is destructive.
The great racial lie is that the most important thing about a person can be discovered before he speaks, acts, chooses, creates or believes anything. One need only look at him.
Once that premise is accepted, the individual disappears.
He is no longer a man with a conscience, a character, and a will. He becomes a representative of a racial category. His actions are interpreted through the group. His achievements are discounted through the group. His suffering is elevated or minimized through the group. His guilt or innocence is inherited from the group.
This is not moral reasoning. It is the abandonment of moral reasoning.
The true divisions within humanity are not racial. They are moral.
Human beings can be understood, in broad terms, as the good, the bad, and the evil.
The good seek truth, defend what is right and recognize the dignity of others even when doing so carries a cost.
The bad generally know the difference between right and wrong but compromise it through weakness, fear, appetite, resentment or convenience.
The evil do something more. They corrupt the moral order itself. They call prejudice justice, vengeance compassion, and domination liberation. They do not merely fall short of the good. They invert it.
Racial hierarchy is one such inversion.
It begins by dividing one humanity into imaginary moral tribes. It then ranks those tribes according to superiority and inferiority, oppressor and oppressed, innocence and guilt, entitlement and obligation.
The old racial order declared that certain people were superior because of their ancestry.
The new racial order declares that certain people are guilty because of their ancestry.
One assigns inherited privilege. The other assigns inherited sin.
The language has changed. The moral architecture has not.
Both systems insist that the individual is subordinate to the racial collective. Both assign moral meaning to birth. Both judge people according to traits they did not choose and cannot change. Both require us to see categories before human beings.
That is the essence of racism—not merely hostility toward a particular group, but the belief that humanity is naturally divided into races possessing distinct moral identities.
Reversing the hierarchy does not abolish it.
It merely changes who is permitted to stand on top.
The answer to white supremacy, therefore, is not black supremacy. The answer to inherited superiority is not inherited guilt. The answer to racial collectivism is not a more fashionable form of racial collectivism administered by universities, corporations, government agencies, and political activists.
The answer is to reject the premise.
There is one human race.
This should be obvious. But ideology is often the art of making the obvious appear naïve.
We are told that refusing to define people by race is itself evidence of racial blindness, indifference or privilege. We are instructed to notice race constantly, classify people accordingly and then pretend that this obsessive racial sorting is the path beyond racism.
It is an extraordinary proposition: We will overcome racial division by making race the central fact of social life.
We will achieve equality by treating people differently according to ancestry.
We will restore individuality by assigning every person a collective identity.
We will create social harmony by teaching citizens to regard one another as hereditary adversaries.
This is not a cure. It is a prescription for permanent conflict.
And that conflict serves a purpose.
A people united by common principles can judge leaders by their conduct. A people divided into racial camps can be persuaded to judge one another instead.
A united people ask whether government is honest, competent, and restrained.
A divided people ask which racial group controls it.
A united people recognize corruption.
A divided people blame their neighbors.
A united people can defend liberty.
A divided people seek advantage.
Those who seek power have always understood the usefulness of division. The formula is ancient: divide the population, inflame grievances, assign collective blame, and then present yourself as the indispensable protector, mediator, or avenger.
The racial agitator does not extinguish hostility. He manages it.
His authority depends upon the continued existence of the conflict. Reconciliation would make him unnecessary. Individual judgment would make his ideology irrelevant. A society that no longer organized itself around racial categories would deprive him of his constituency, his leverage, and his power.
So the wounds must remain open.
Past injustice must never become history. It must remain a permanent political claim exercised by descendants against descendants. The living must be divided according to the crimes and sufferings of the dead. Children must be taught to inherit either grievance or guilt before they are old enough to have committed an offense against anyone.
The result is not justice. It is hereditary resentment.
And hereditary resentment is socially fatal.
It destroys trust by teaching us to suspect motives according to color. It destroys friendship by placing ideology between individuals. It destroys accountability by converting personal responsibility into collective explanation. It destroys forgiveness by insisting that no debt can ever truly be paid.
Most importantly, it destroys the possibility of a common national identity.
A nation cannot survive indefinitely when its citizens are taught that they are not truly fellow citizens but members of competing racial constituencies engaged in a permanent struggle for power.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. Nor can a country whose people have been persuaded that ancestry is destiny and reconciliation is betrayal.
The deepest evil of racial ideology is not simply that it encourages people to dislike one another. Its deeper evil is that it distracts us from the actual nature of the human struggle.
Cruelty has no color.
Neither does courage.
Greed, sacrifice, cowardice, honesty, hatred, mercy, deceit, and nobility are found among every ethnicity and in every civilization. No group has exclusive possession of virtue. No group has inherited ownership of evil.
The moral condition of man resides not in the pigment of his skin but in the choices of his heart.
That is why racial ideology must obscure the individual. The individual is evidence against the theory. Every act of unexpected kindness, every friendship across ethnic lines, every betrayal within a group and every display of courage by someone assigned the role of victim or oppressor exposes the inadequacy of racial classification.
Reality is stubbornly individual.
Ideology is relentlessly collective.
The good recognize our common humanity and judge each person according to character and conduct.
The bad may succumb to racial fear, resentment, or tribal loyalty.
The evil deliberately cultivate those passions, knowing that a population consumed by mutual suspicion can be manipulated into destroying the very society that protects them all.
The alternative is neither complicated nor new.
Reject racial hierarchy in every form.
Reject the assignment of collective innocence and collective guilt.
Reject the notion that people are morally defined by ancestry.
Recover the individual as the proper object of judgment.
See the person before the category.
There are not several races locked in an endless struggle for power.
There is one human race, composed of individuals capable of good, bad, and evil.
The choice before us is not whether one racial group will triumph over another. It is whether we will abandon the lie of race before those who profit from that lie succeed in turning one human family against itself.
Hancock also publishes on Substack. You can check out more of his work here.
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