Analysis Of 'The Social Construction Of Race' By Ian Lopez

To begin with, the aim of this paper is to respond to the article written by Ian F. Haney Lopez. The main idea of this article was to discuss the question of belonging of a person to this or that racial group. According to Lopez the construction of race is mostly based on the choice of the society, but not on the genetic or other information. My response to this article will be rather neutral because it is fifty percent agreed with her point of view and half a hundred percent disagreed.

One of the most prevalent themes throughout the world’s history is the dispute over race and racial differences. But, there is a problem: the majority of the population doesn’t have a clear understanding of what race is. Race is a socially constructed grouping of people that was created in order for people to differentiate themselves from one another and has many sources of influence. While most people believe race is determined by biological characteristics (hair type, skin color, eye shape, etc.), this is not true. To make things more complicated, there is no cut and dry definition to race. Authors of Race and Ethnicity in Society, Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margret Anderson, claim that there are seven different distinct ways to define race. They begin with the popular belief of biological characteristics, and, as mentioned before, through social construction. They go on to note that race can be formed from an ethnic group, from social class rank, from racial formation by institutions, and also can form from one’s self-definition (Higginbotham & Anderson, 2012, p. 13). All of these ways to define race have been seen throughout our history, and many of them have caused problems for minorities, especially in the United States.

‘Whiteness’ is a socially constructed category of race, where people who are not ‘white’ are racially designated while ‘whites’ escape designation as if their racial category is not historically and ideologically based (Puzan, 2003). Race is socially constructed (Dyer, 1997) and it is important to acknowledge this in order to address its impact. Unless whiteness is labelled and confronted, being ‘white’ is usually considered the ‘norm’ which acquires certain social privileges, while all other socially-constructed categories of ‘race’ are considered different or, as Puzan (2003) terms it, the ‘racialised Other’.

It is mandatory to understand the history behind Intersectionality and it’s upbringing to understand how it ties into cultural identity. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s classic article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” helps to understand the struggle that women of color face with entwined differences that are not confronted and dealt with accordingly. Crenshaw mentions that, “The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite -- that is frequently conflates or ignores infra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is

In The Social Construction of Race, Ian F. Haney Lopez defines race as a social construct that is constantly changing its meaning due to the fickle nature of society. Lopez believes that this fickleness stems from a social climate formed by a variety of factors such as human economic interest, current events, and ideology. There are certain racial definitions however, that have remained mostly the same despite efforts to bring attention to the offensiveness and immorality of such discriminatory thinking. These stereotypes are oftentimes negative and apply to members of minority races, which end up perpetuating themselves into various cultural outlets of society including the media and film. Through the use of such popular forms of entertainment, the definitions of a race remain largely unchanged as future generations remain exposed to these racial classifications.

In society, race clearly affects one's life chances. These are the chances of getting opportunities and gaining experience for progression. The social construction of race is based on privileges and availability of resources. Looking at society and the formation of race in a historical context, whites have always held some sort of delusional belief of a "white-skin privilege." This advantage grants whites an advantage in society whether one desires it or not. This notion is often commonly referred to as reality.

In Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s essay “Racial Formation”, we see how the tendency to assign each individual a specific race as misleading. This essay suggests that race is not merely biological, but rather lays more in sociology and historical perspective. Once we look at someone and say, “They’re white”, it brings forth all the stereotype’s that go along with that “race”, and once the race is assigned, it is assumed that we can know something about the person.

Back when the European explorers discovered people who did not look like them it started racial conflicts. They questioned if the natives where human and did not treat them as equals. In the nineteenth century Max Webber disregarded the biological explanations for racial conflict and emphasized the social and political factors which engendered such conflicts. Since Webber did this it began changing perspective on race. In the text is states that in the contemporary social science literature race is assumed to be a variable which it shaped by broader societal force. In this time race is not seen as difference in skin color but difference in status. Which made society believe one race is better than the others. Over the years the meaning of race has changed tremendously. For example, the existence of water is not based on collective acceptance, or

Before I studied human race in detailed, it was just one simple concept and classification that people hardly bothered about. The effects of race upon an individual are way too surprising. It affects one’s life chances, the area where one lives in, the way an individual is treated, one’s financial condition, education, life expectancy and so on.

Race has been one of the most outstanding situations in the United States all the way from the 1500s up until now. The concept of race has been socially constructed in a way that is broad and difficult to understand. Social construction can be defined as the set of rules are determined by society’s urges and trends. The rules created by society play a huge role in racialization, as the U.S. creates laws to separate the English or whites from the nonwhites. Europeans, Indigenous People, and Africans were all racialized and victimized due to various reasons. Both the Europeans and Indigenous People were treated differently than African American slaves since they had slightly more freedom and rights, but in many

As Omi and Winant describe the notion of racial consciousness and its interplay with race and society as a whole is an entirely modern phenomenon. Racial consciousness is the ability to understand that one’s own race is different than someone else’s. Racial consciousness can be defined by physical characteristics, history, culture, and traditions. By understanding where one’s race comes from they are fully able to identify with that race. While one’s race is defined by their own personal history, culture, and lifestyle other individuals’ viewpoints also play a role in racial identity. As seen in “Racial Formations”, when explorers encountered people who not only looked different but where culturally different as well, these natives were automatically categorized as other. Both parties involved had not been conscious of other races except their own and henceforth differences among people have been a societal method of

The relationship between the law and society greatly contributes to our nation’s overall perception as to how the law affects our everyday lives. The weight of individual opinion and action through the law dictates what our nation thinks about certain topics from determining who is allowed to cross our borders to whether or not healthcare should be provided to all people. Ian Haney Lopez, Professor of law at Boalt Hall School of Law, at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of White by Law, The Legal Construction of Race, describes exactly how the workings of the law contribute to society’s overall construction of race. Sarah Rose, author and professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, in her new book, “No Right

Throughout history and across the different cultures, people socially construct ideas of race. All races of people are not biologically different because there is no genes or gene clusters similar to all people of one race, but because people have similar visual traits humans have categorized people as being different. Due to these differences, societies have been known to show tendencies based on the socially constructed races and people develop personal views about the various races from past experiences. In large cities in the United States there are areas where the African American population is more dense, which shows that people draw imaginary boundaries due to race. An example of how the social construction of race is that in the United

All the immigrant women interviewed in the film, Between Worlds: Domestic Violence and Immigrant Women suffered from intimate partner abuse from psychological abuse to physical aggression and violence. The all were victims of non-physical abuse such as intimidation, isolation and emotional neglect. The all were financially dependent on their abuser and lacked support systems, such as family or friends that could protect them from their abuser or offer them alternatives economically. The all

Race is a “human-constructed categories that assume great social importance. Those categories are typically based on observable physical traits (for example, skin shade, hair texture, and eye shape) and geographic origin believed to distinguish one race from another” (Ferrante 2014). Based on the definition, the reading I made, and the video of “A Class Divided”, I believe race is a social construction idea made by society to distinguish between different races, and then passed that view of race from generation to generation because that is what they have been told from an authoritative person to believe since childhood. Once people have knowledge of what is the meaning of race, then society creates racism, prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination against other races.