What Is Race: My Reflection 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.

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.

Firstly, racial profiling will always exist in a diverse country, and it is ignorant to think that with the melting pot culture and races America has, that everyone will be treated the same way. From the beginning of mankind to the current times today, people have and will always keep being identified by their color. Stereotypes will always stay, since the old generation teaches their thoughts to the next, and when the next generation has their children, they too will teach what they learned. Stereotypes towards multiple races are known by everybody, so when meeting new people, past experiences and teachings already create

What if we lived in a world where there were no races? What if people were not discriminated against because of the color of their skin or because they are different from what we see as acceptable? This is what Kwame Anthony Appiah tries to examine in his essay “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections.” Appiah tries to point out that “American social distinctions cannot be understood in terms of the concept of race.” (102) That America is made up of so many different races that no race is the more superior or in other cases inferior to one another. America is defined by its cultural diversity; it is what makes America the nation that it is. It is the reason that we as Americans have freedoms other people

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.

     I believe racism to be as apparent today if not more profound then in the past. A large portion of society believes that no man is still to this day denied any unalienable rights. I do not believe this statement to be true. We have adopted affirmative action programs and enforced strict equal opportunity employment laws to hinder discrimination. Although I believe it is still a very prevalent issue in today’s society. Despite laws, investigations and results show that twenty percent of African Americans interviewing for jobs were turned down due to the color of their skin (Omi and Winant 67-68). Indeed racism may be very subtle in most cases; it is not a thing of the past but rather a very serious problem in society that evolves

Race in the United States has always been a problem in the past and still remains the same in the present society. Race relations is defined by relations between members or communities of different races within one country (en.oxforddictionairies.com). Minorities have been denied legally and socially rights in the past by the dominant race, White Americans. Now in modern society minorities are the majority of the United States, but are still being racial targeted, profiled and killed by White Americans.

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.

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.

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.

The last chapter of the text varies depending on which edition is read. After buying the second edition I was able to acquire a copy of the first. The last chapters were an interesting correlation to the periods in which they were published, though they are both similar. After the 2008 election, Taylor rewrote the last chapter of the text to reflect the new conversation brought about with the election of our first black president. In the first edition, chapter six undertakes how race affects the increasingly prevalent topic of immigration and globalization in the United States (among various other things). Taylor stresses the importance of defining immigration administration as a racial structure, regardless of the insistence of supporters

The concept of race is an ancient construction through which a single society models all of mankind around the ideal man. This idealism evolved from prejudice and ignorance of another culture and the inability to view another human as equal. The establishment of race and racism can be seen from as early as the Middle Ages through the present. The social construction of racism and the feeling of superiority to people of other ethnicities, have been distinguishably present in European societies as well as America throughout the last several centuries.

Race has proven to be more than the color of someone’s skin. Race, through personal experience, is stigmas and stereotypes, limits and control, power, and opportunity. Race is about shades, hues, and pigments justifying bias actions. Does one race, because of something that cannot be changed, have an advantage over another? Does something as simple as the color dictate how one is seen in society and limit what one can and cannot do?

The English term ‘race’ is believed to originate from the Spanish word raza, which means ‘breed’ or ‘stock’ (Race). People use race to define other groups, this separation of groups is based largely on physical features. Features like skin color and hair don’t affect the fundamental biology of human variation (Hotz). Race is truly only skin deep, there are no true biological separations between two ‘racial’ groups. Scientifically speaking, there is more variation between single local groups than there is between two large, global groups; the human variation is constantly altering (Lewontin). The majority of today’s anthropologists agree that race is a form of social categorization, not the separation of groups based on biological

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.