Race : Race And Race Essay

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.

Race is a hot topic in our world. We all think we know what race is. After all, we are constantly being bombarded with it whether it be from media, politics, or sports. The truth is that race does not revolve around the idea of biological traits or characteristics. It is a modern concept that we as a society have created to divide people into categories. I will argue that race is socially constructed from a biological, political history, and sociological standpoint, and how it may impact other areas of our society.

Racism is a concept that has been around for centuries of human history: The act of a privileged party oppressing, demeaning, and committing genocide of another race. However, scientifically, humanity is only made up of a single species: homosapiens. The idea of race as it is known (groups based on skin pigment and cultural descent) is a social construct created and ingrained into society. Just because race is socially constructed does not mean racism is not real. Social constructs are not physical entities, but are certainly “real” to humans of a society. One concept that has been created along with the idea of race is the inequality of said races. Caucasian people in many societies (including North American and European) have become the “norm”, meaning they are the standard and expected. Because of this, Caucasian people receive benefits, often known as white privilege, which is “A collective, implicit acceptance of whiteness as virtuous, normal, unremarkable, and expected.” (Jeffries, 2013). Because race is socially constructed in culture, it has created white privilege and white normativity. This privilege can be seen in the media created and consumed by North Americans, and in the justice system and law upheld in North American countries.

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.

Defining someone by their skin color is an everyday phenomenon. Many people see a specific shade of skin and believe they know exactly how that person is going to speak, carry, and illustrate themselves. It seems to be embedded in one’s head at a young age to have specific views given by family, friends, and coworkers such as, believing interracial relationships are immoral, or it being acceptable to judge others according to their skin color. In the articles “Race is a Four Letter Word” by Teja Arboleda and “Mr. Z” by M. Carl Holman, the color of the authors skin plays a substantial role on how they are treated and perceived. Living in a society that doesn’t understand one’s culture can make their life extremely difficult.

Race is a social-constructed terminology where it categorizes people into groups that share certain distinctive physical characteristics such as skin color. However, race and racial identity is unstable, unfixed and constantly shifting, as race, typically, is a signifier of prevalent social conflict and interest. Although, many, particularly anthropologists and sociologists, argue in the aforementioned point of view, some – mainly white population -- believe that racial characteristics are biologically inherited.

American society likes to believe that race relations in our country are no longer strained. We do not want to hear about the need for affirmative action or about the growing numbers of white supremacist groups. In order to appease our collective conscious, we put aside the disturbing fact that racism is alive and well in the great U.S.A. It hides in the workplace, it subtly shows its ugly face in the media, and it affects the education of minority students nationwide. In the following excerpts from an interview with a middle class African American male, the reader will find strong evidence that race plays a major role in determining the type and quality of education a student receives.

Unwittingly or quite knowingly people have built systems of inequalities around race but people have also built identity, friendships, and college mates around it. Nevertheless, several people I recently interviewed never appeared to be certain when race was a good thing or when it was a bad thing to talk about, which in my mind leaves us all struggling with a particularly intimidating question: When should we talk as if race matters?

In 1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue. Everyone knows the story of Christopher Columbus; they are taught it in grade school if not before then. When he landed in America by accident, he had no idea that he would be creating the world's largest Melting Pot. This "melting pot" provided means for a new country, made from a mixture of many cultures and beliefs, thus creating a new country with a new and ever-changing culture. One complication with a Melting Pot is that you cannot put people of different race and ethnicity together without conflict.

Numerous scholars and historians believe that Hitler’s ideas concerning race and racial struggle have originated from the philosophies of Charles Darwin, either directly or through various other sources. In today’s context, the word “racism” means to dislike an individual or a group of individuals based on the color of their skin. However, during the mid-twentieth century, the word “racism” meant to dislike a group of individuals because they were intellectually and/or morally inferior. Thus, it becomes the responsibility of the superior race to take control of the inferior race, or wipe them out completely in the case of Adolf Hitler. Hitler attempted to create and protect “the superior race” from the “inferior race” by implementing administrative policies designed to protect the former. This belief of superiority comes from Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” which argued that there are significant inequalities within each species and that some species get taken advantage of while others take advantage of others. //This evolutionary theory could have been used as a justification for Hitler to do something he would have done anyhow, to exterminate roughly six million Jews who, according to him, belonged to the “inferior race”. It is fairly clear that Darwin did not mean for his work to be interpreted the way it did; however, it can be argued that Hitler used this theory of progress through the elimination of the weak as a method to rationalize his actions to his

Race, Class and Gender issues are commonly brought up. Throughout history many groups have been stigmatized not just for their race, but for their sex, and class as well. People of lower class incomes get slandered for where they live and for not having the economical means to purchase most common goods. Women have been considered the weaker sex for centuries, and currently, some of the old fashioned and ignorant theories on women being subordinate to men prevail.

Race is the division between different ethnicities or people with different backgrounds that live in one society. So why is race important? Well, people have the feeling of categorizing, making people feel uncomfortable towards other races, which can lead to discrimination. The way sociologist uses the concept of race and ethnicity, is by connecting the idea of majority and minority groups with social structures of inequality, stratification and power. Race refers to physical differences that cultures and groups consider socially significant. While sociology is the study of social life and social change, how social causes and consequences of human behavior affect society. Sociologists spend time investigating the structure of different groups, organizations and societies, on how people within these contexts interact. Race has adopted to the idea of white’s social change in power during the Great Depression Era.

For many years now the people in power or “whites” have passed laws so that other racial groups are kept at the bottom of the social hierarchy. These racial group that are kept at the bottom become racialized and oppressed therefore they become unequal to the people that are at the top of this hierarchy. The racial groups that are kept at the bottom vary from the Native-Americans to the Mexican-Americans and obviously the African-Americans. In this essay I will be comparing how the racialization process has been similar and different between these racial groups. I will also define race and racialization. Furthermore, I will explain how class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship has impacted the racialization process within these groups.

Although race does not exist in the world in an objective way, it still is relevant in today’s society. It is obvious that race is real in society and it affects the way we view others as well as ourselves. Race is a social construct that is produced by the superior race and their power to regulate. “The category of ‘white’ was subject to challenges brought about by the influx of diverse groups who were not of the same Anglo-Saxonstock as the founding immigrants” (Omi and Winant 24). Frankly, ‘white’ was the norm, the others were considered an outcast.

1, To say that race and gender are socially constructs means that while both race and gender help shape the world in which we live, society can alter their meaning and significance. They have power because we give them power. Race is a social construct because, by definition, society can and does arbitrarily define it. For example, when American society forbidden interracial marriage (Conley 331), and determined an individual's race using the “one drop rule,” where someone is considered black if even their most distant ancestor was black. This is an example of how race can be imposed upon someone without his or her own individual endorsement. Race is not even biologically sound. Wayne Joseph was a man who was born and raised black, yet from