Blog Assignment 11: Social Construction Regarding Race

Race: A Thing of the Past?

 

Like all great plans you need to know where you came from and where you want to end up to make a solid plan of action. This assignment requires me to discuss the social construction of race. It is my goal to take a look at the past, learn from it, see where we are today, and make a determination of where we are headed for the future.

 

A Brief  Look into the Past

To over simplify the past in America one could say that the group that was in charge reacted to differences in people in a very damaging and dehumanizing way. For example, when they settled in the new land, they took over and pushed the original settlers aside (the American Indians) and deemed them to be "savages." The degree to which they saw this difference in how to categorized people were how they were treated and excluded from our constitution as being recognized as citizens of the United States (Newman, 2012). They did this by "race." They decided to group people based on their similarities of looks, actions, and where they came from. This is the definition they deemed "race" to be.

 

 

Another example of the obsession to categorize and suppress a group, that was different than what the white man saw in a mirror, was slavery. In the past, people were led to believe as their "truth" that race was a way to label and categorize people into different groups. Specifically, categorize slaves as a "race" that were sub-human, allowed them to  justify the maltreatment of an entire "race" that had "black blood." According to the conflict perspective, "it is a fundamental truth that stratification systems serve the interests of those at the top and not the survival needs of the entire society (Newman, 2012)." They believed that slavery was right and that it was the white man's right to own a slave. This "truth" of their time unfortunately did not get changed until 1865. 

 

The social construction of their reality of that time made it known and factual that depending on the type of "blood" that ran through your veins, determined whether or not you were a slave or a slave owner. Race at that time was based on the "one-drop" rule, if you had any amount of "black blood" in you, you were considered to be viewed as a lower level of a human than a white man (Newman, 2012). Like the Native Americans, even after slavery was abolished, this "race" was still treated differently with continued racism and discrimination.

Later, race also became a label to categorize where your ancestors originated from. For example, the race "German" came from Germany. In short, categorizing people in the past was a way to apply a man-made word, called "race" that was suppose to explain where they originated from in the world and be able to apply the socially constructed and excepted prejudice and suppressive actions against them according to their "truth" about particular races in that time. 

A Brief Look at Where we are Today

 I would like to think that we have evolved as a "human race" since that time in our history. However, one quick glance at a college application or the every changing classifications that have existed on our recent and historical, continually changing, and evolving choices and definitions of "race" within our census, reminds us that those in the power positions are still obsessed with separating, differentiating, and categorizing people in the name of "tracking" what the make-up of our country is or to see who goes to college, or buys a house, etc.

 

As far as I am concerned "race" and "racism" should and could be a thing of the past because the old "truths" are continually changing and not holding up to mean anything anymore. If race was not socially constructed then it would not be changing as often as it is. For example, in the past "race" was used to categorize and justify why it was OK to treat a different race other than your own with abuse, oppression, and inequality. They looked at race as something to be different biologically than themselves. It was in their blood so to say. Slavery served the interest of those on the top, reaffirming that there was in-deed a difference in races. Now race is something we track to make sure we are being treated equal?

 

Now that we have evolved scientifically, it is difficult to justify the ill-treatment of a group base on biological race because they are "different" is false. Yes, we may look and act different, and come from different parts of the globe, but these differences do not change our humanness. There is not a "black" gene, or a "white" gene, etc. to make that old claim "true" or believable in today's world. Thank goodness this socially constructed belief changed over time.

 

Like all socially constructed realities, they change over time and within cultures. The concept of race is no different. In the past, before globalization, we would ask someone what race they were and they would say and identify with German, Chinese, Japanese, American, and so on. When asked the same question on the 2010 Census you would check more than one of the following "White, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian Indian, Japanese...or Samoan (Newman, 2012)." My point in looking at the past and present into the word "race" as being understood to be socially constructed is evident when you look at the different meanings we hold towards different races as well as how we are constantly changing which races to put on a census in the first place. 

 

So Where are We Going? Is "Race" a Thing of the Past?

 

Now that it is not all that accurate to categorize people according to their point of anscestral origination into this country because we are all here now. Is it not more valid to abolish the word "race" because it in a sense no longer has any meaning other than a futile attempt to track people for discriminatory purposes like who is filling out a particular form (who is applying to college or a driver's license, etc.).

Race is becoming more and more diluted as globalization continues. The words on these forms are an impossibility to derive any valid information from anymore so why have it? For example, If I was to check a different box than what I actually identify myself with (white), but I checked "Hispanic," are people going to ask me for a blood sample to prove my "race" or will they dispute it by asking for a comprehensive family lineage? What is it for any more?

My ancestors are from Germany and I do not identify myself as German on the form, one because it is not an option anymore, hence social constructed, and two I am white, so I put white. What does it matter and to who, if my skin is white?

The other reason I think that "race" as we understand it to be on today's forms is invalid because some of the choices are correlated with a "place of our ancestral origination" and others like "white" or "black" is based on the color of skin. Because of this socially constructed determination of "race" is not consisted even within its own current use, reduces it meaning to be useless.

As people become the fourth and fifth generation of being and American, what does "white," "black," or "Asian, Japanese, and Chinese mean? If we can no longer determine the "race" of someone because of their ancestral point of origination is American and generations of "mixing," and the mobility of moving from country to country, other than the color of skin, these things are continually changing.

With globalization erasing the demographics of "race," all that will be left to differentiate people in the future is "What country did you live in before moving to America" and by the way, "What is the color of your skin?" It makes me wonder if the veil of reality will finally be revealed that the original point of race was just to and still may be just a reflection of which group is being discriminated, prejudiced, and suppressed in a particular point of time in our history.

Do we really need to group people by biological traits or ethnicity? What purpose does it serve today in our globalized society? If we do not have the word "race" to be obsessed with, would we also eliminate racism? One could hope that we are headed in that direction.

References

Newman, D. (2012. Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life: 9th Edition SAGE Publications.

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