A Reflection On Race

To many people across a variety of different nationalities and cultures, race has been proven to be a key factor for how society views you in the eyes of those who are prominently in charge. The term race has been brought up in recent years, to be considered a form of identification, as the word race is used to describe physical characteristics such as a person’s color of skin, hair, and eyes. When in reality, the correct term they should be using is Ethnicity. As a result, the term race is used to separate people into sub-categories based on the color of their skin. This type of classification, is a man-made creation used by society to classify certain groups of people into lower classes, while keeping the predominate group in charge at the top.

First and foremost, I'm deeply disturbed by what transpired at the National Policy Institute conference over the weekend. It's rather apropos that we are covering the topic of race at this moment. I'm furious but inspired (now, more than ever) to continue on this journey of justice studies as part of my personal commitment to be an ally for minorities. I wish that every person had the privilege of taking this class, the knowledge we're gaining is one of the most powerful tools we can use to combat the ignorance of white nationalism.

Humans define race by how they conceive and categorize different social realities. Thus, race is often referred to as a social construct. The differences in skin color and facial characteristics have led most of society to classify humans into groups instead of individuals. These constructs affect us all, and they often result in situations where majority racial groups cause undue suffering to those that are part of the minority. The understanding of race as a social construct is best illustrated by the examination of racial issues within our own culture, specifically those that have plagued the history of the United States.

It appears to be that the discussion of race and class in America has become amplified, especially in the last couple of years. For many, it is a touchy subject that hits close to home. With the presence of social media and news that feeds off of racial tension in America, the issues are polarizing and difficult to productively discuss. America’s handling of race and class relations is generally not something to be proud of, and there exists a long history of issues with race. It is clear that there is a lack of understanding and empathy of what others experience toward those who are oppressed. So often it is too easy to dismiss another human’s experiences as reality if one has had no prior encounter with the same challenges. Race is easy to sweep under the rug, but we must address the problem, and it is not a one size fits all solution. It is a problem that has been years in the making and continues to have an enormous impact on our human capital from an economic standpoint. And most of the time, there is a correlation between race and class.

Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical,

Races are separated into categories, some are of higher standings then others, and some are believed to be better than others. The idea of race is believed to be something that has been made up by our culture in order to help separate people and to be able to separate them from others. This is done

Birth of a Nation uses its histrionic plot to show how tangled destinies of a southern and northern family before and after the Civil War. It willingly portrays southern blacks as spiteful and uncivil, the northern whites as crafty, dishonest, and conceited, and the film’s southern whites as anguish recurrent radical and erotic mortifications at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before factually being saved by the thoughtful, Ku Klux Klan. The film is divided to show the different aspects of those two sides during this historical time. During this time Africans were coming to America and it started the reconstruction on our country. D.W. Griffith made this film to show us the reality of racism at this point in time.

The PBS series “Race: The Power of an Illusion” effectively works to expose race as a social construct and deconstructs the false notions that race is a biological marker. The series first discusses that all human beings originated from Africa but dispersed about 70,000 years ago to various places in the world. As a result of this migration, people were spread to different locations throughout the world with different environmental conditions that affected their physical traits. It was many years after the migration in which people began to display these new physical traits such as slanted eyes, fair skin, and differing hair textures. While the series notes the physical changes that occurred during the migration it also emphasizes that race while it may seem apparent in skin color and other physical features has no real biological basis.

There is a long and intertwined history between America and race. As we have not only read and discussed in class, the film, “The Story We Tell”, expands upon the notion that the concept of race, much like that of America, is a recent development. Race is a social constructed concept often used to further economical and/or political gain. As we learned watching the film, race has always gone deeper than how you look, it has more to with the meaning persons assign to how you look. The words, “all men are created equal”, harvest a moral contradiction, we, a nation that takes great pride in that very foundation of equality, can also portray the idea of race in such a scale that would suppress and eliminated such a multitude of people for our own gain.

Race is not something that is an exact thing. It is a social construct. It is a reflection of who you are and what you perceive.

American whiteness as articulated by Birth of a Nation is built on stereotypes, and this is precisely why minstrelsy might have the power to resist racism. Minstrel performances relied on stereotypes to evoke their opposites. It is possible to assume that the discourse of mass entertainment from its minstrel days to current film and possibly beyond, recognizing and accepting blackface conventions and stereotypes were key, almost necessary conditions of American whiteness. "Minstrelsy took the productive ambivalence inherent to the stereotype and magnified it to increase the stereotype's inevitable undoing of itself" (4). But in Birth of a Nation, the determining concept of the stereotype that makes sense is disrupted by the inevitable context provided by narrative: in the film's narrative, African-Americans are seen gently working and playing for their master's benefit prior to the Civil War. This stereotypical representation draws on myths that blackface minstrelsy seemed to ally to the politics of white supremacy; it worked to promote propaganda. Prior to the Civil War, the film explains African-Americans were docile and happy on the plantation because of slave laws imposed by

Although the topic of race is a multifaceted topic with many elements that have developed over time, the topic race, however, has always been a way for people to justify personal gain by objectifying people’s inherent differences. Many authors and important figures like Charles Darwin and the Kellogg family used race and other techniques like eugenics the stripped away the thinly veiled cover that slightly suggested that all people were the same and partially equal. They wanted the people to understand that the only race to have the best chance surviving and over the best genetically fit race would to be to sterilize lesser races so that there would not be any competition or genetic impurity.

It’s interesting to note that the film did not conceal or make an effort to correct any of the tribulations plaguing America at the time. For example, the film made no attempt to tackle the race relation problem in America. Indeed, the only African Americans Capra puts into the film were train attendants who are shown as indolent and inconsiderate. Aside from a report that the European representatives

Omi and Winant’s discussion from “Racial Formations” are generally about race being a social construct and is also demonstrated in the viewing of Race - The power of an illusion. Omi and Winant have both agreed that race is socially constructed in society. Ultimately this means that race is seen differently in different societies and different cultures. Media, politics, school, economy and family helps alter society’s structure of race. In the viewing , also media as well as history seemed to create race by showing how social norms have evolved in different racial groups.

I took the time today to read the article titled “What is Race” by Victor M. Fernandez, RN, BSN and found myself agreeably intrigued and in admiration of his thoughts regarding race. Victor touched on an extremely insightful and significant topic; one that most people have sturdy opinions about. Race – what is it? What does this mean to you? What does it mean to our upcoming careers in the nursing field? I trust that how we characterize and assess our awareness of race is due exclusively to how we were raised. I do not mean merely what we were taught from our family or culture about race, but to a certain extent how we have lived it, and how it has lived around us. “Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide