The mirror: one species, very real categories

On November 27, 1978, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted the Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice. Its first article is crystal clear: all human beings form a single species, descended from a common stock, and are born equal in dignity and rights.

Science has since confirmed this principle. In 2019, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists recalled that humans share 99.9% of their DNA. Most genetic variation changes gradually from one region to another, without following "racial" borders. Race, it concludes, does not accurately describe human diversity. These categories developed with European colonial expansion and were used to justify exploitation and discrimination.

But if race does not exist in biology, racism has very concrete effects, including on health, the same statement stresses. That is why in Quebec people speak of "personnes racisées," racialized people. The Office québécois de la langue française notes that the word refers in particular to a person affected by racism, while inviting caution in its use. It does not claim that races exist: it names an imposed label that produces real effects.

Recognizing that race is an invention also means recognizing that it can be undone. What humans have built, other humans can take apart, together. Ubuntu says it in its own way: there is only one human family, and each of us becomes fully ourselves within it through others.