Race And Identity: My Definition Of Racial Smog

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.

Individual’s race shapes their identity because race is there problem in society today. Black african americans are still not treated equal to whites in american. Race is There is still discrimination in the shadows of our society, within job or even first appearance. With a Black african race your identity is hard to make without someone doubting your intelligence or capability. Furthermore, racial profiling and stereotypes portrays how race shapes an individual’s identity.

Throughout the essay, Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections, I found Kwame Anthony Appiah’s claims about social scripts to support my idea that we present ourselves differently depending on the circumstance. There are times when we try to play into the majority, as well as times where we try and fall into the minority; we choose which group we want to highlight depending on which will get us where we want to go.

“Racial smog”, (Herbes-Sommers C. 2003) is not visible to the eye, but clearly exists in everyone. Throughout our lives society has portrayed races to be identified not just by the color of their skin or physical features, but also by their social class, work ethic, job status and preconceived notions based upon prior actions by a specific race. As humans, we naturally profile and assign stereotypes to people because the media, social groups, and how our families portray a certain race in a specific manner. Depending on where you were raised or how you were raised, you may or may not have been exposed to things in life that may be normal to others. Stereotypes within races have changed with the ever-changing trends of public and political

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.

Humans are unique in the natural world as we are the only species to self divide our populations into groups based upon physical characteristics, the main one being skin color. As the most advanced spcecies on Earth we have come to have the most convoluted approach to how we perceive people. Our society has become obsessed with classifying our population into groups based upon skin tone or ethnic background. This approach has permeated our lives to such an extent that even the simple act of filling out paperwork asks one to classify themselves as a particular race. In this world of advanced technology and education one must question how we have become controlled by such an abstract thought? How have we allowed our citizens to become reduced to a mere color?

A comment was made in a blog post early on in the year about whiteness in American that bugged me. It’s a topic that came up a few times throughout the semester in and outside of class. Granted, this topic is based on a single blog post but a collection of comment and statements that were made on specific blogs and during class sessions. This topic I fin extremely important mainly because I felt as though there was some confusion around the topic being white. Understandably if you’re white in America I think it’s easy to forget exactly how privileged you are. Nonetheless, it forced me to want to talk about white privilege in America, explain the meaning of “paradox of privilege”,

Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s arguments from “Racial Formations” are about how race is socially constructed and is shown in Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Michael Omi and Howard Winant believe that race is socially constructed in society; therefore, the meaning of race varies within different cultures and societies. According to Omi and Winant, influences such as, media, school, politics, history, family and economy create society’s structure of race. In Caucasia, media, family and school are forces that create race by stating how one should conform to social norms for different racial groups.

All through history, the label that is associate with Black people have become a prevailing discourse that explicitly racialized black people, even today. There are specific characteristics that are related with being black and are disseminate to the public and are represented as truth. Williams Rose (2002) argues, “As the color white is associated with everything good … so Blacks has, through the ages, carried associations with all that is bad and low… the Negro is believed to be stupid immoral, diseased, lazy, incompetent, and dangerous to the white man’s virtue and social order “(p.181). Blackness have become objectified in public spaces, they are view as a threat on the street of Toronto, surrounding areas and even in the criminal

In the U.S., the term “race” has different connotation compared to other countries like Brazil. As the book Culture defines it- in Chapter 11: Ethnicity and Race- a race is nothing more than a biologically related ethnic group. Often, the tendency of North American society to rely on hypodescent, leads to stress and lack of self-identity. As a matter of fact, the book describes hypodescent as the arbitrary classification of interracial children as a member of the least privileged ethnic group to which either of their parents corresponds. Besides, in today’s world U.S. population has become increasing diversified. Diversity has led to racial tension between different groups. Latinos is one general term given to people who speak a Latin-derived language (this includes South American

Race is a Social Construct Although race does not exist from a biological perspective, race does exist as an idea and social construct. Race is ingrained in the history of American culture. Our society is conditioned to think racially. Our views of people automatically put them in racial categories. We make certain value judgments about them based on little more than the color of their skin.

Charles W. Mills argues that even if there is no biological notion of race that can underwrite our social one, our social one still has some objectivity to it. He provides details for many hypothetical and real life instances in order to back up his argument. My view, along with Mills’, is that race is socially constructed, and has been socially constructed long before I even had an opinion on the topic. I will explore every avenue of what Mills offers on the topic and will formulate a further opinion based on each subject individually.

Many are unaware of the effects that race has played in their lives over the years. Some may not understand its implications, but are very oblivious to it. Race can influence such things like attitude and behavior. Nowadays being white or black means something more than just a Crayola color. No longer are they just colors, they are races with their own rules and regulations. People of color have been inferior to the white race for centuries. In their own way Zora Neale Hurston shows this concept in her story “How it feels to be Colored Me” as does Richard Wright in his autobiographical sketch “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”.

After reading the information and processing the information, I realized I was thinking race and ethnicity was the same in classification. When people asked me what ethnicity I was, I always said black and white to self-identify myself. Which after reading the Learning Module, I gave the people the answer about my race and not ethnicity. Race is usually classified with physical feature characteristics. Examples could be skin color, hair color, hair texture, eye color, or bone structure are some characteristics to place someone in a race category. After viewing the video, Race- The power of an Illusion it had a lot of great information to help me understand the Learning Module 3 on Race. I complete the sorting on human diversity, to see if I

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.