The Illusion of Racial Identity Essays

The idea of race is real, but it is not biologically reality. Race is based on cultural perspectives that we as human beings use to identify persons around the world. “Science would favor Du Bois. Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning” (Gannon) Meaning that there is nothing biologically real about race. And that it is strictly culturally developed.

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.

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood, questions racial labeling of all sorts. What is the difference between race, ethnicity and culture? Appiah reevaluates people’s ways of thinking, which encourages his readers to think outside of the norms to analyze what their definition of race is. He argues that if one rejects the existence of racism, which is the idea that there are distinctions of our species, then that person cannot adhere to the fact that there are hereditary differentiations such as superior or inferior ethnicities. That individual insinuates that we are equal in all racial related aspects, but that is not the case in our current environment.

Jean Paul Sartre's Existential philosophy posits that is in man, and in man alone, that existence precedes essence. Simply put, Sartre means that man is first, and only subsequently to his “isness” does he become this or that. The implication in Sartre's philosophy is that man must create his own essence: it is in being thrown into the world through consciounsess intent, loving, struggling, experiencing and being in the world that man is alllowed to define itself. Yet, the definition always remains open ended: we cannot say that a human is definitively this or that before its death and indeed, it is the ultimate nothingness of death that being is defined. The concepts that Sartre examines in Being and Nothingness

Martin Heidegger stated, criticizing the “wrong” path that western philosophy deviated to, that people understood “being” only in the superficial sense. The advancements in mathematics and natural sciences along the millennia always pre-assumed that being was a known phenomenon and never bothered to explore its true nature; bypassing the herculean task, we never delved into what “Ontos” really

The basis of identity is formed through the concept and ideas of race and racial consciousness. The implied stereotypes that are labeled on to each race has the ability to cause an individuals to become racially conscious about themselves. Race builds a wall that creates a consciousness mind that connects to the identity of person forming the way they live, speak, act, believe, and feel. In the memoir Between the Word and Me written by Ta Nehisi Coates, Ta Nehisi’s letter to his son reveals how race and racial consciousness can shape identity and elaborates of how the meaning of identity is developed.

The terms in the title refer to the two primary constituents of reality: being, which is non-conscious, and the negation of being, which is the way Sartre conceives of consciousness. This consciousness of being is examined by a method called phenomenological, which suggests that no pretension is being made to uncover the ultimate nature of reality in a "metaphysics," but that Sartre intends to describe as accurately as possible the structures of reality as it appears.

Is race-thinking an inevitable product of the fact of human diversity? Before attempting to address this question, we must first deconstruct and define the terms race-thinking as well as race. Race-thinking, as Paul C. Taylor defines the term, occurs when human beings assign “generic meaning to human bodies and bloodlines” (16); it concerns itself with the “kinds, called races, and... about individuals, who thereby have racial identities (18). The concept of race is an elusive term to define, especially since philosophers, biologists, and sociologists may define the term via different methods. Michael Hardimon, a philosopher at UC San Diego, defines the logical core of the concept of race by imposing a set of three theses that constitutes and

According to Michael Omi and Howard Winant, “Race is a concept, a representation or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, [from the] phenotype markers of difference and the meaning and social practices that are ascribed to these differences...” (Omi and Winant, pg. 111). The term race is a very controversial concept to define not only because of its underlying relations to different ideologies and historical events but also due to the various levels of analysis. Throughout history race has played a rather significant role in distinguishing racial hierarchy within a society.

Race is not is biological, race is an idea that we perceive based on physical characteristics. People experience their racial identity at different times in their lives. Describing how I became aware of my own racial identity and how it affected me to be the person I am today and my future is a good eye opener for becoming a future educator. Also my perspective of how my racial identity has changed maybe a slight change but nothing too drastic.

In the assignment, ‘Race as an Illusion’ I had to complete the “Sorting People” activity on the PBS website. Right away, I knew that I would have a tough time with sorting people into different categories. First, it was because the pictures are slightly blurry, making it hard to find specific details about each person. For example, when I looked for people to place in the Asian category, I looked for the stereotypical straight black hair. When looking for people to put in the Black category, I looked for stereotypical features of dark skin and curly black hair. While looking for people to place in the white category I looked for the stereotypical people with a light skin tone. Then when it came to the Hispanic/Latino group and Native American group, I didn’t know where to start, as I believe both groups have similar characteristics.

In the introduction to The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Martin Heidegger explains that throughout the history of philosophy, there has been many discoveries of the “domains of being” viz., “nature, space, and soul”. However, none of these discoveries could be appreciated in a way that clarifies “their specific being.” As an example, Heidegger interprets this problem, as the reason Plato understood why the soul, along with its logos, was a different being from that of a sensible one. It is from this preliminary starting point that Heidegger investigates the Kantian contention that the ontological argument fails, because “being is not a real predicate.”

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, he is still well known for the theories on existentialism and phenomenology. One for the most important works by Heidegger on philosophy of the 20th century is “Being and Time” translated from German “Sein und Zeit”. In addition, the analysis of Being in his work became trigger to exploration of “human Being” which is “Da-sein”

Aristotle and Heidegger have conflicting views on what a human or beings are. Although, there are some similarities to each of their set of ideas. Aristotle has a clear hierarchical framework classifying the differences between humans, animals, and plants. Heidegger opposes this strict definitions by discussing this idea of “Dasein” which states of being there. Although, their approaches to this topic are different with the types of question one asks and how they theorize about what is a being. There is key similarities that they discuss almost two thousand years apart. Aristotle and Heidegger are two philosophers that have tackled the enormous question, what is it to be a being? This paper discusses the two different approaches to defining this long standing question.

This paper is going to talk about the idea behind Existentialism, the Existentialist struggle faced by Berenger and the unreliable resolution to a