So in my sociology class a couple days ago we were asked the question of whether race is real. I was sort of taken aback because right away I wanted to answer: YES! Look around, though we've tried to be proactive in getting rid of de jure discrimination, we still have de facto discrimination in schools, in jobs, in government. I guess what the question was trying to address is the basis of race. What I've learned is that race is subjective based in objective institutions.
I mean, think about it, there's really no one gene that says you're black or white or Asian or Hispanic. I guess it comes down to society and how we "racialize" different groups of people. Think about it, in the beginnings of America, there wasn't this issue of black or white or hispanic or white and so on, but the discriminated class was the indentured servants or the backwood farmers. However, we can link race and discrimination to objective parts of history such as slavery or the Trail of Tears or the Mexican Cession. I don't know if race is real, but I know that the repercussions from discrimination based on race are as real as you and me.
I think the bigger question is that if race is not real, how can we go about fixing the institutions based solely on discriminating because of race? How can we fix something that would be labeled as "formulated within our minds?" I think its one of those questions, that one day, society will be able to solve, and one day maybe this concept of race won't even exist.
But another issue is that if we try to shatter the idea of race, that means that we would have to get rid of acts such as affirmative action that helps those who were historically discriminated. Does this mean that to help the future and get rid of the idea of race in the future that we have to hurt those living in the present? If you have and answer, let me tell you, you got my vote the next election.
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Race is real. If you want to make race subjective, might as well make gender, sexual orientation, religion, and geekdom subjective. I think the bigger question is: why turn everything into something subjective when they're clearly objective? The dictionary is there for a reason. Trying to change what the dictionary says (which means what the society has believed for a long, long time) is just being circular. It's getting you nowhere.
Race is real. We are all part of the human race. The various strains of humanity found on this Earth are not seperate races, if they were then surely they wouldn't be able to breed together? The idea that people with various skin colours are of a different race is just a man made fallacy. Just because a bunch of pale skinned land pirates decided it would be convenient to justify their exploitation of other humans through their little race theories, it does not make them factual or indeed actual. People believed that the Earth was flat for a very long time too ya know.
I agree that race is real. However, you can not live in the past, and change is taking place everyday, yes the dictionary is changing (literally and figuratively) as we go on about our day. The issue of race will always face this world, because some people are afraid of the fact that there are people out there who are not like them.
I never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
But they are like them Nasrink, they just don't look the same because all humans have distinct dna patterns and genetics which dictate their physical characteristics. Any other differences are cultural, which too often are cofused with racial characteristics. Race is a term which was misappropriated long ago in a time of lesser enlightenment. The British declared that Africans and Irish were racially inferior to the Anglo Teutonic, and used a perverted take on Darwinism to justify their enslaving of both peoples. They believed that both Irish and African were lower down the evolutionary scale than white Anglo Saxons. The idea that the human race is segregated into various 'races' is the failed ideology of the racist, and allows people to make lazy judgements instead of properly trying to understand other cultures.
You are right, like everything else, it is a man made concept. However, it is very real and very tangible. You may not want to face it, but everyone has an imprint of what race is. It can not be changed, or removed from society. People would be too lost. Race has become part of our identity. When looking at a stranger, we judge them according to our estimate of what his race is. It is not fair, but it is real.
I never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain
The segregating of human beings into different races is not real. Just because society has been brow beaten through a popular belief, it does not make it any more real than when we believed the world was flat. Just because the Earths flatness was accepted, it did not make it reality. I don't judge a person based on what their race is, I think their nationality and socio-economic standing offer more accurate measures by which to judge. You see, my ex-girlfriend is Ethiopian, and she has nothing whatsoever in common with an African American, beyond a skin colour. The idea of humans being different races is a notion which can be changed, it is in the interests of the ignorant to make people think that it can't. Are you thrying to tell me that a white Muslim and an Arabic Muslim raised in the same neighbourhood are not going to share common characteristics, and that the white Muslim would have more in common with a white Aethiest raised on the other side of the world? Accepting racial segregation within the human race is apathetic, you endorse the opinion that just because somebody has a different skin colour, they are helpless in not adhering to a racial stereotype. You are validating the notion that behaviour is innate to an individual based on the colour of their skin. How can you react so defensively to being judged for being Muslim, and then declare that 'we judge them according to our estimate of what his race is'. I would take personal offence if you judged me as white, because my people were persecuted visciously for 800 years by other white skinned people. I am actually offended that you claim my identity lies with a 'White Race'. Your wearing of Muslim iconography is essentially a public declaration of your belief in a set list of ideologies, whether or not you agree with all parts of the religion is immaterial, because by wearing any symbol of Islamic faith you are saying that you follow all Islamic beliefs, including the homophobic ones and the sexist ones, how is a person on the street to know that you don't agree with everything you appear to stand for through you choice of clothing. I think a guy with black skin who had just completed he degree at Harvard would take exception to you assuming he was from the hood and did drive bys in his spare time, don't you? Believing you are helpless against a dominant and fundamentally flawed ideology is just plain old apathy. Try not believing the lies of people who believe segregating the human race into little pocket of them and us is a good idea, surely you have heard the phrase 'United We Stand, Divided We Fall'. Some people are too dumb to understand that this line is specific to the human race, not the fabricated racial catagories of the ignorant. If race for you is, as you claimed, part of your identity, then maybe you need to travel outside of America for a bit, it would be an eye-opener. As it was for the African Americans who tried to established Liberia only to find that they had nothing in common with West Africans. If you can name me two other races outside of the human race which can breed together, then I will herald inter-human racial catogarization 'tangible', til then remember that if you sat where you are sitting now a few hundred years ago, you would be plummeting into the depths of an abyss, the flat earth slowly fading into the distance above.