preview

Race Is Socially Constructed

Decent Essays

This essay seeks to highlight how race is not biologically constructed but rather socially constructed.it will discuss aspects of essentialism and the role it has played in constructing race it will also discuss what race is, and highlight examples of how race is socially constructed with examples from the movie skin.
Race is defined as descendants of a common ancestor; one of the distinct variations of the human species (Websters New Dictionary 1998). People are still consumed by the notion that there is a generalization that can say who belongs to which ethnic group. Race is socially constructed meaning it is an idea that humans make up through interaction, it is so dangerous that it could be life threatening (web1). According to Vail (1989) …show more content…

Black people were stereotyped all they were good for was working in the farms and they were not intellectual because that is in their blood. In the United States sickle cell anaemia is considered a black disease, and however it derives from geography and evolution not race. In places where malaria is a big threat to human health, through natural selection, the reproduced in great numbers. However the same factor made them susceptible to sickle cell anaemia it is difficult to see how this is a racial …show more content…

The laws and policies that were put in place became a problem for the very same white man that made the laws so the white man felt the need to go against those laws to keep his child.
The theory of racial formation sees the constriction of race as a contested process of on-going conflict Omi and Winant (1994:74). The theory of racial formation also insists the ‘reality’ of race despite its origins a social construction. ”race can be defined as a concept that signifies and symbolises socio-political conflicts and interests in reference is different of human bodies winant(2004:155).
When it comes to race there seems to be a hierarchy its whites at the top Indian and coloured people in the middle an blacks at the very bottom like a centrum. That’s how it was in the apartheid era and till this day that’s how it still is even though apartheid laws have been abolished but the idea still remains in people’s heads because especially black people were manipulated into thinking like that and this is where the idea of anti-essentialism comes into place. People are to be informed that people are equally the same biologically and hereditary the colour of our skin means nothing and we all deserve

Get Access