“The traditional racial ideology has thus made of the black man a devil, a bogey man, the epitome of evil and badness. He is the foil that sets off the white social values lending to them an increased splendor. The use to which the black race is put is cryptically suggested by the story of the little girl who cried because the Negroes were leaving. When asked why she was crying, she replied, ‘when the Negroes are all gone there won’t be anybody to be better than.'”

~Lewis C. Copeland, “The Negro as a Contrast Conception” in Race Relations and the Race Problem (1939)

Race identifies us in only two ways. We are either less than or greater than. It is an identity based on comparisons and one cannot exist without the other. Just as there must be a slave in order for there to be a master, there must be a white person in order for there to exist a black person and vice versa. Each is dependent upon the other for meaning and a measure of power. Neither identity can exist apart from the other and yet, many of us will not live together. It is a strange community.

Our being and self- understanding is based on the reduction or inflation of another person’s social value. We desire to be more human, more powerful, more beautiful than others.  Our humanity is never enough and if possible only as a social reality, must be added to daily. But, in order for this to be true, we must make another human being less than human, powerless and ugly. This social arrangement will not produce a win- win situation. And the sad truth is that this is not the goal. Another is this: we would do it with or without race.

But, why do we need to feel or appear better than others? What drives this motivation, this competitive nature? Most would say that it is human nature and the American way. I tend to agree. But, we are more than human beings, more than the meanings derived from our flesh. And whatever is gained, we lose in the end as there is no eternal storage space for the material trappings of this life. Consequently, accumulation in any form is not the purpose of living.

No, there is Someone greater than us all whose purpose is best and there is nothing in heaven or in the earth that can be compared to it. God made us not for comparison but for companionship. We are to walk alongside each other not run against one other. And we are better: better than the meanings we contrive based on our external markers of success, better than our social and cultural stereotypes, better than our temporal comparisons, better than competitions that begin the moment we get in position behind the color line. And yes, we are better than race.

Our lives are not given to us to be compared, seemingly handed back to God while asking, “Why didn’t you give me this or not make me that way?” The fact is that when God mades us He did not compare us to anyone.