Race, Racism, and Caste: Truth and Lies
In the annals of human history, no lie has endured quite like the myth of race. It is a story crafted in conquest, written in blood, and retold so convincingly that many still mistake it for truth. Yet science, history, and reason stand in opposition to this narrative. Race, as we think of it—skin color, physical features, and imagined divisions—is a fiction. The real story lies in how this fiction was wielded as a weapon, shaping systems of caste and racism to divide, dominate, and control.
The Genetic Truth
Let’s start with the science. The Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, mapped the DNA of humanity and uncovered a truth as universal as it is inconvenient: humans are 99.9% genetically identical. The differences we see—such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape—are adaptations to geography over millennia, not evidence of separate races. These variations are no more significant than differences in height or eye color within a family.
As Harvard geneticist David Reich put it bluntly: “Race as a biological concept doesn’t exist.” Yet these superficial differences have been weaponized for centuries to justify profound inequities. The idea of race persists not because it is real, but because it serves a purpose: to uphold systems of power and privilege.
Caste: The Skeleton Beneath the Skin
If race is the story, caste is its foundation. Isabel Wilkerson, in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, exposes how societies across the world have built hierarchies that assign value to human lives based on arbitrary markers. In India, caste is codified into law and tradition. In Nazi Germany, it was engineered to justify genocide. In the United States, it hides in plain sight, cloaked in the language of race.
Wilkerson argues that caste systems are strikingly similar across cultures. They assign roles, enforce boundaries, and perpetuate inequality by normalizing one group’s dominance over another. In America, race became the visible shorthand for caste, turning skin color into a marker of who belongs at the top and who must stay at the bottom.
The Lies That Built Racism
Race wasn’t always a “fact.” It was invented during the era of colonization, when European powers needed to justify enslaving Africans and dispossessing Indigenous peoples. Pseudoscience filled the gap. Phrenology, eugenics, and other fabricated disciplines were used to create a hierarchy of humanity, with white Europeans conveniently placed at the top.
As Ibram X. Kendi explains in Stamped from the Beginning, these lies didn’t arise out of ignorance. They were calculated, providing the moral and intellectual cover needed to sustain oppression. Once embedded in the laws, economies, and cultures of societies, these lies became self-reinforcing.
Why the Lie Persists
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, the myth of race continues to endure. Why? Because it serves as both a tool of division and a shield of denial. Systems of racism and caste thrive when their mechanisms are invisible, and myths like race allow those in power to justify inequities without questioning their legitimacy.
Psychologically, the persistence of racial myths is tied to privilege and fear. For those who benefit from the lie, confronting it can feel like a loss of identity or status. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility examines how this defensiveness—what she terms “white fragility”—often arises when the foundations of race and privilege are challenged. This discomfort perpetuates the myth by deflecting necessary conversations and change.
The Cost of the Myth
The consequences of the race myth are devastating. In America, it has fueled centuries of violence, from slavery and lynching to mass incarceration and police brutality. Globally, it has justified colonialism, genocide, and exploitation. And it continues to shape who gets access to wealth, education, and opportunity.
Caste systems, whether explicit or implicit, are the invisible architecture of inequality. They dictate who is seen, who is heard, and who is valued. They tell a lie so big it feels like truth: that some people are worth more than others.
The Truth We Must Confront
Here is the truth: race does not exist. It is not a biological reality, nor a natural order. It is a social invention, created to divide and conquer. The systems of caste and racism that stem from it are not inevitable—they are choices societies have made, and choices can be unmade.
Unmaking these systems requires facing uncomfortable truths. It means acknowledging how deeply the lies of race and caste are woven into the fabric of our world. It means recognizing the privileges and biases we carry and committing to the work of dismantling them. This is not easy. As James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Toward a New Humanity
If race is a lie, then what’s the truth? The truth is that we are one human race, bound by shared DNA and a shared destiny. The differences between us are not divisions; they are variations, as natural and essential as the diversity of life itself.
But embracing this truth does not erase the reality of racism or the harm it has caused. On the contrary, it demands that we confront it head-on. Dismantling the systems built on the lies of race and caste will require multi-pronged approaches. This means enacting policies to address systemic inequities, from wealth redistribution and criminal justice reform to equitable education access. It means reexamining cultural narratives in schools, media, and art that reinforce hierarchies. And most importantly, it demands personal introspection—acknowledging and unlearning biases ingrained by these systems.
We must reject the lies that divide us and embrace the truth that unites us. Because when we strip away the myths of race and caste, we are left with what has been true all along: our shared humanity.
Sources
DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press, 2018.
Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books, 2016.
Reich, David. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. Pantheon Books, 2018.
Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Random House, 2020.
Human Genome Project. “An Overview of the Human Genome.” Genome.gov, National Human Genome Research Institute.