If we can change our sex, why can't we change our race?

The YouTube video below is from an English morning TV show. It shows an interview between the hosts, Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, and a German woman, Martina Big, who has begun taking medicines and undergoing surgery to transform herself into a black woman.



The hosts of the show have previously run interviews in which they supported primary school children making the decision to change sex. They claimed that people can be "gender fluid." This fits in with the liberal belief that what matters is that we self determine who we are rather than this being predetermined by qualities we are born into like our sex.

So you would think that the TV hosts would support Martina Big in wanting to be "race fluid" or transracial. It is difficult to see how what she is doing is any different in principle from those seeking to change their biological sex.

But in the interview Philip Schofield is clearly strongly opposed to what Martina Big is doing. He cannot find a liberal reason to oppose her, so instead comes up with a traditionalist one. At 4.15 he says to Martina Big, as a criticism of her:

But you understand that race and colour is much more than skin deep. It's heritage and pedigree and tradition and history and struggle. It's all of these things that you can't hope to get anywhere near with three tanning injections.

He expresses the thought very well. But it goes directly against the older liberal narrative. For decades Westerners have been told the exact opposite, that to identify with their race is wrong because race is only skin deep and therefore meaningless, with the accusation that those wanting to preserve their race are merely prejudiced.

What is happening here? There are several possibilities. First, that what Martina Big is doing is just too much for Philip Schofield to accept right now, but that he would change his mind later as the logic of liberalism rolls onward and public opinion changes. The second possibility is that blacks still have too much status as a "victim class" within the liberal world view for liberals to think that a white person might be allowed to access that identity (and escape from "oppressor" to "oppressed"). Another possibility is that Philip Schofield understands at some level the double standard that the leftist version of liberalism aims to dissolve white identity, but is not meant to undercut other identities in the same way - so that healthier traditional ideas can still be applied to the other races.

So the final question is this: is it likely that transracialism will be accepted in the future the way that transsexualism now is?

If white liberalism lasts for another 20 years then I think it will be accepted. After all, white women were once thought to be a high status victim class within the liberal worldview. But when it came to a showdown between feminists who wanted to keep the category of woman for biological women and transsexuals, the transsexuals won. Eventually, it is likely that those claiming to be transracial will be thought to have a higher political claim than those defending minority racial categories.

However, it doesn't look likely that white liberalism is going to survive the sea change in politics that is on the horizon. The changing demographics in the US is encouraging the radical left to base itself more squarely on the assertion of racial interests against the current white majority. The radical left has already started to demand that white liberals surrender to this new agenda. Many liberals will comply, perhaps some will break toward the right.

I'm not sure, in other words, if liberalism has that much more time to roll forward before it crashes into barriers it created for itself.