Rethinking Race: Part 1, Only One Race Matters

Critical race theory … Whoopi Goldberg suspended for comments about Jews and race … once again we are arguing about racism … welcome to the first in an eight part series on how we might understand “America’s original sin.” The series will be published on eight successive days. In Part 1 we will look at the concept of race — a concept that should unite us, as we will see, but instead has often been used to tear us apart.

The year was 1869 and Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss student of cell biology working at the University of Basel, made a discovery that would ultimately change our understanding of life itself. Working with pus extracted from surgical bandages, Miescher found an unknown substance containing both phosphorus and nitrogen in the nuclei of white blood cells. He called the substance nuclein.

Today, it is better known as deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Seventy-five years would pass — and a number of other prominent scientists would help advance our knowledge of this chemical compound — before we realized that Miescher had stumbled onto the master blueprint for all living things. And, unbeknownst to him, he had also given us the ability to say, once and for all, that racism is based on a lie.

Only one race matters … because only one race exists