Best way I can explain American’s “fixation” on race is that our country’s history is based on the attempt to create a racist white utopia through law (slavery, ethnic cleansing, manifest destiny, segregation, Jim Crow, private prisons etc.).

Many of the historical debates, protests, rebellions, riots, and wars we’ve had were largely surrounding the issue of racial equality. And… it never went away because racist white people have evolved their political tactics. They still want “the South to rise again”, they still want “to Make American Great Again”, they still want segregation, slavery, and woman subordination.

You might be thinking, “it’s not that serious”, but the mere fact that America is becoming the de facto Nazi Regime of the West now says it all. Hitler was deeply inspired by America’s Jim Crow laws and used it as a platform to address “the Jewish Question”. But, White American’s racism didn’t just materialize out of nothing. It’s descendant of Western Imperialism and Colonialism that was being exported across the globe by Europeans who had finally come to a geopolitical status quo on their continent after checks notes thousands of years of fighting over whose nation and religion is better.

TL;DR: American’s being fixated on race is just the next phase of geopolitical infighting that came after thousands of years of Europeans fixating on nationality and religion, both of which are becoming less relevant each day than one’s ethnic and cultural identity.

That’s what they meant by “uphill both ways”. Probably referring to having to cross the equator twice. This makes so much sense now.