Something I had long felt instinctively, without being able to articulate it, could finally be put into words. I saw that it was plain wrong to evaluate people according to race, for it was clear that culture was the real divider among peoples. Given enough time, a generation or two, we could all become “The Other,” no more different in behavior from our neighbors and peers than they were from each other. Even the cosmetic differences would disappear in the course of a few more generations of “assimilation,” adopting the local diet, mores, and chromosomes, and eventually dissolving into the gene pool.
The word race comes from the same Latin root as the French word rascin – root. Hence the English word deracinated, “to be uprooted.” Exiled, perhaps. Well, exile is better than imprisonment, after all, and it seems to me that roots are highly overrated anyway. But racemus is Latin for “bunch of grapes,” and perhaps those are sour ones. I no longer had any roots; I only had the road.