Relevant, adj.

1. closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand

Race is not timeless.  It is not a classic.  It will go out of style just as soon as we, humans, stop fashioning ourselves according to the social coloring of skin.

We call ourselves progressive but can’t believe that we will ever get beyond race.  I wonder, then,  how progressive are we really?  What are we progressing toward if we cannot live past race and its progeny?

We call ourselves post- modern but wouldn’t dare describe our time as post- racial.  But, race is not a modern conception.  It is not new and shiny, not the latest and greatest invention.

Instead, we give our new lives, our new time, our new human beings, that is babies, to race.  We make race timeless, classic, current fashion for human beings because all those that preceded her and him wore race and swore by its prejudices and stereotypes.

Race is repositioned in our lives and in the lives of generations to come when we change what we say with our mouths.  We must begin to speak of it in the past tense.  This is how we put race behind us and in its rightful place.  We  strip it of its power with our tongues.

We give it new life with our words.  Now, let’s talk about its death.  Let’s talk about race as “once upon a time” instead of for all of time.  Let’s frame our conversations and the lives to come with sentences that begin with: “When race was relevant…”