Why you will never achieve "racial equity" - what no political camp tells you

 tl;dr/Summary: Ethnic and racial groups are a social construct with no basis in biology. If society tries to close down a disparity (in wealth, education, etc.) between two so-called "ethnic groups", then the definition of those ethnicities will get redefined such as to create the illusion of inequity again. Then we will start fighting again, and after we close down the new gap, they will get redefined again, and it is a vicious cycle. Viewing society through the lens of race is something that only racists should do: we all agree that Aryans are not "real" in the biological sense, and Germany today doesn't talk about how Aryans are so privileged and how we need to close the wealth disparity between Aryans and Blacks or whatever, so why do we still talk about the so-called "White people", for example?

   Race and ethnicity are social constructs. There is no biological basis to these concepts. There are correlations between these labels and physical traits such as skin color or facial traits, but they remain only that: correlations. You can have a so-called "White person", a so-called "Native American" and a so-called "Asian" who look identical in terms of skin color and everything. You could have a so-called "mixed-race African American", a so-called "Roma/gypsy" and a so-called "Hispanic" who look identical. The very fact that in a few cases, race is something that you can "hide" or "fool people into believing you are part of one" should make you think that there is no biological basis to this concept.

    Yet somehow we still use these outdated concepts created by racists in order to oppress more or less arbitrarily-selected groups of people. Imagine if holocaust survivors today talked about how Aryans are so privileged, how Aryans need a handicap in their admissions in college, how the wealth disparity between Aryans and other races was so big. Everyone would be perplexed: why are you still talking about Aryans in 2022, are you a Nazi? Then, why do we still talk about white people in the same way, if whiteness is a social construct invented in order to oppress? Why do we still talk about racism through the lens of race-identity?

    

    The mainstream identity-politics-obsessed left loves to flaunt statistics that show variance in outcome between so-called "racial/ethnic groups" as something bad in of itself that should change, how White people make way more money than Black people on average, or stuff like that. The centrist and moderate conservative crowds have criticized this idea (see: Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, etc.) on the grounds that, essentially, correlation is not causation, and that certain ethnic groups are correlated with other metrics (cultural influences, poverty, etc.) and that those metrics themselves are the cause of the disparity in outcome. The far-right and fascist crowds propose that there are biological/genetic differences between races that make some inherently superior at metrics such as intelligence, which is obviously wrong.

    But the mainstream conservatives are only theoretically correct in their analysis, as it is too superficial and they are missing the deeper mechanism at play here. The reality is that there is absolutely no biological basis to concepts like "race", which makes them very easy to flexibly redefine in order to push hidden agendas. What our critical focus should be on is not on the metrics of racial inequity themselves, or on the correlations between them and other socially constructed categories, but on how we have come to define these categories in the first place.

    Hence, this is why you will never achieve racial inequity: let's take, for example, the wealth inequity between the so-called "Whites" and the so-called "Blacks". In a few dozens of years, perhaps, we will get closer and closer to closing this wealth disparity between these two arbitrarily selected categories. What will happen then, is society will change the definition of "White" and "Black" such as to create the illusion of inequity again. Then, the new definition of "White" will include more rich people, the new definition of "Black" will include more poor people, and we are back to where we started at. Then, society will start discriminating against the new definition of "White", perhaps redistributing wealth from them to the new definition of "Black", or something like that, and when this newly defined inequity starts to get smaller, the categories will be redefined, and so on.

    This is why racial inequity is not only a useless goal, but an impossible goal. But it is not impossible because of the reasons fascists give, that certain ethnic groups are biologically predisposed to perform better, or anything like that. No, it is the exact opposite reason: that these so-called "ethnic groups" are not even biologically predisposed to all hold some stable biological essential trait, like skin color, which is exactly why they will get getting redefined, or maybe new categories will be invented. Scholars like Jordan Peterson only showed us why equity between identity groups is unimportant, but not about why we have come to talk about this in the first place and why it is impossible.

    And the end result is clear: viewing society through the lens of race, no matter how good your intentions are (solving racism, etc.) only serves as a distraction from other more important metrics such as economic status/class, education level, etc. Is "race 1" poorer, on average, than "race 2"? Then go help poor people. Will you also help some (fewer in numbers) people from "race 2"? Great!