Quote of the Day: Adorno on the Limits of "We're All Just People"

Today's quote comes from Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia:

The familiar argument of tolerance, that all people and all races are equal, is a boomerang.... [P]roofs that the Jews are not a race will . . . scarcely alter the fact that totalitarians know full well whom they do and whom they do not intend to murder. (102)

Adorno has recently been rising up my list of "theorists whose work I am relatively unfamiliar with, but know I should become more familiar with."

I should say that this quote applies, I think, with equal force in the race context. We can assert until we're blue in the face the biological truth that "race is a construct". That notwithstanding, the racists are fully aware whom they do and do not intend to oppress.