I’ve been tracking the way the word ‘racism’ has changed in recent times. Both the word and the concept of ‘racism’ are the product of Charles Darwin. Humanity has always been plagued by xenophobia; a fear or dislike of people who are different from us. This fear shows up throughout history in the way people of different tribes, cultures and races have fought battles and enslaved the losers. But this changed with the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 which introduced the idea that some life forms were more highly evolved and others less so. By 1880 this had become ‘racialism’ – the notion that some races were superior (more highly evolved) and others inferior (less evolved). By 1903 this had lost a syllable and become the word we know today: ‘racism’. This old racism still plagues us today. But it’s become far more marginal than ever before. Fringe groups of neo-Nazis and Klansmen are now widely despised. Their views are held in contempt by most people in the Western world. But now the ‘new racism’ has taken hold – which agrees that the old superior/inferior bias is a load of old rope. The mistake the ‘new racism’ makes is to think that race is a central, defining characteristic of each person. Under the ‘new racism’ your race is all-important. But science tells us that genetic differences between races occupy a mere seven per cent of human DNA. In other words, people of different races share 93 per cent of their humanity. The illusion that race matters is the result of an unfortunate coincidence – the skin is the part of the body that is seen by other people. So, the mistake that both the old and the new racism make is to regard skin colour as a central, defining characteristic of a human being. The 7 per cent of difference DNA makes between races is entirely superficial. Race is, literally, skin-deep. The proposal for the Indigenous Voice to parliament is guilty of the ‘new racism.’ Sadly, the ‘new racism’ is just as divisive as the ‘old racism’.