Excuse me sir, do you have a licence and registration for that ice cream?

You suck

Those lights could be UFO

Very interesting and I would not have expected that outcome. In some ways the actions of avowed racists is easier to deal with. If our cards are on the table we can at least have a discussion. The racism that dwells in people and institutions who never admit it is incredibly corrosive.

Reading historical texts about eras where the concept of race didn’t exist as we know it today is refreshing. I suppose they had other problems but the modern conception of race feels like a political tool and completely artificial. So too with gender, it’s encouraging to see kids abandoning those outdated notions.

Is it a good question though? Even if we set aside the fact that it’s a loaded question, what are we going to do with the information?

It has a similar character to the question ‘what is a race?’. Information that people look a certain way is not particularly useful, on the other hand we feel it viscerally. If we don’t stop to think we end up making unhelpful judgements.

Race, gender, nation states, money, the past and future, these are just concepts and if we confine ourselves to the domain of concepts we run the risk of mistaking them for our actual experience, out in the world. We stop listening and start assuming that our internal narrative is infallible, because it is.