Deep breath… The term ‘m*x*d-r**e’ should be assigned to the ethnic language dustbin, alongside terms like N****R, C**N, W*G, G******G, R*D, Y****W, N***O, B*****E, C******D, and H**F-C***E.
Why?
I was prompted to write this now as saddened to hear two Black commentators, whose views I greatly value, repeatedly use the term. One even referred to themselves as being m*x*d-r**e.
It is a racist term because it implies the existence of a ‘pure’ race or races. This idea takes us straight to the origins of racism, where humanity was divided into races, each defined by physical, intellectual, and emotional characteristics. These were then ranked based on skin colour, with the so-called white race given the most favorable traits and the black race the least—perceived as the most ugly, stupid, and childish. All that was deemed good and chaste was attributed to the white race, while all that was bad and carnal was assigned to the black race.
The use of m*x*d-r**e harks back to 18th-century Europe and the Enlightenment, where the concept of race was formalized. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and historian (1711–1776), famously stated:
“I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites.”
Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish biologist and physician (1707–1778), divided humans into four races, placing black people at the bottom:
- Homo Europaeus (WHITE): Gentle, inventive, and governed by laws
- Homo Americanus (REDDISH): Choleric, upright, and free
- Homo Asiaticus (TAWNY): Melancholic, strict, and greedy
- Homo Africanus (BLACK): Crafty, lazy, and careless
Edward Long, in his deeply racist text justifying slavery and white supremacy, History of Jamaica, took the idea further believing blacks were a separate species:
"For my own part, I think there are extremely potent reasons for believing, that the White and the Negroe are two distinct species."
He went on to describe black people in dehumanizing terms:
"Instead of hair, black people had ‘a covering of wool, like the bestial fleece.’ Their bodies were infested with black lice. Their ‘bestial or fetid smell’ was so strong that ‘it continues in places where they have been near a quarter of an hour.’ They had no plan or system of morality. They were barbarous to their children. Black men had no taste but for women, and eating and drinking to excess; no wish but to be idle. In Africa, ‘their roads . . . are mere sheep-paths, twice as long as they need be, and almost impassable.’ All authors said that blacks were ‘the vilest of the human kind.’"
This is why I avoid the term m*x*d-r**e and often call others out for using it.
There are other ways of acknowledging difference through culture, ancestry or heritage to name three possible differences from one human to another – race is not one to my mind as it is a fabrication, a construct, based on the idea of white supremacy. There is no pure race upon which this term can be based—it has no scientific foundation. It is the language of racists. It is the language of eugenics. I would urge that its use be consigned to the ethnic language dustbin where it belongs.