Is Race A Social Construct?
In class, we were discussing Fit to Be Citizens, a great new addition to our class that talks about race, my favorite topic. We all took a look at page 7, Table I. Population of Los Angeles Broken Down By Race, 1880-1940. Someone (probably Kate) touched on the fact that white people were able to claim who can be considered white and who can’t. That fact ties into racial “fluidity” or that race is just a social construct. What is your view on that? Do you believe that race is a social construct and why? Deeming a Person of Color white also ties into the fact that white people construct a social hierarchy and give themselves the power to consider someone white…? Also, why deem them white? Is white, right?
Last year in my Contemporary American Culture English class, we watched films like "Race: The Power of an Illusion" and read books such as "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coats, both accounts of how race is misunderstood and defined through nonexistent social hierarchy. I believe that society identified people by skin color and created racism, but that does not mean that racism does not exist. Race is obviously deeply entrenched in our American society, therefore we let it come to fruition through acts of unwarranted prejudice. Race has always been just a label for humans. It has been proven that, biologically, race does not exist. Historically, it is easy to see that white people identified any other racial group as inferior, justifying it by "scientific" proof. This fallacy is just another example of confirmation bias, similar to the topic of tuberculosis and race that we addressed in class today. As for the idea of whiteness, again, I am hesitant to completely disregard the idea of it, solely because society has clearly created such a hierarchy with a group at the top, and that group is labelled as white. Obviously racial fluid and multiracial people exist, but I find it interesting that almost always those people are immediately associated with the race that visually affects them the most. This cycle will almost always keep the most white-looking people at the top of the social hierarchy, leaving anyone anywhere else on the spectrum, under this privileged group.
ReplyDeleteRace, when being used to identify the identity of a large group of people with similar skin colors or ethnicities, is by all means a social construct. While it is true that there are privileges unique to certain social positions, the reason those privileges exist is because people enforce the fantasy of race. Similarly, the need to create identities in opposition to these dominant racial narratives is only needed insofar as the social construct of race exists and is constantly invested in.
ReplyDeleteThe fantasy of race is what enabled white people to justify the subjugation of people they saw as inferior. By creating a unified identity under the veil of whiteness that was distinct and superior to blackness, white folks were able to give their identity more power than it deserves. The unified, whole, identity of whiteness gives white people a sense of wholeness as they are superior to their black counterparts. Beyond the violence that follows such fantasies, the pursuit of a fantasy is bad because, well, it's a fantasy. It is impossible to encompass the experience of people from vastly different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic classes under the same veil, meaning such a fantasy will only lead to exclusion or unnecessary nativism. This is especially the case as our world becomes more globalized and people mate with people of different complexions than their own. As aesthetic races become deconstructed, the heuristic of race becomes insufficient to deal with political issues. It risks creating more and more authenticity contests for people of mixed races as time moves along. That is not to say it is not bad for people to be angry when someone pretends to experience something unique to a racial complexion or tries to say they are when they do not, but rather globalization will literally make it impossible to categorize people based on race.
The book proves the arbitrariness of race as a way to categorize people. The example of Mexican Americans being classified as white is a good one, but even the fact that the Mexican category had both people who lived in California for years and recent immigrants proves that the category was abritruary. Of course Mexican people living in California had shared experiences, but everyone does, and in the process of arbitrarily deciding who falls under the veil of "Mexican" the graph effaces people's unique experiences.
Race as a social construct is a topic that I have become increasingly interested in and have wanted to look into and research further. Being biracial, I have considered the way we are racially categorized and separated into distinct groups, producing potentially negative effects. There are consistently moments throughout my life where I feel inferior to one side and others where that same side feels superior. Sometimes I feel as if I am not "Mexican" enough and more "Chinese" or the other way around. In relation to the college process and my test taking experiences (PSAT, ACT, etc), to check the box that you are of Hispanic origin is to indicate that you may be pre-disposed to a lower socio economic status or educational disadvantages. Here, I am categorized under the status of a disadvantaged social group. As I happen to be half Mexican, others who may be only a quarter, or less, still get categorized under the same racial group. That goes for those who are fully of Hispanic origin. In this, I see categorization as a construct in its own way. While race is something that is very important to me, as it is one of the main ways I identify and define myself, I do think it can been seen as a social construct. It doesn't need to mean that everyone should be viewed as the same, disregarding individualism, but I do think that we as a society, have identified different groups by skin color or certain physical characteristics.
ReplyDeleteToday we discussed the racial binary quite a bit and came to the conclusion that it is ultimately a bad thing. As we discuss race in the present day, we are discussing the discrimination of the past (and the present but the origin of discrimination is written in history). People were grouped as white, black, or somewhere in between in Fit to Be Citizens. What was the defining factor of who was a certain race? It was different for each race. Mexicans were NOT Chinese or Japanese people. Indians were a disappearing race so they did not get counted. From 1890-1920, non-immigrant Mexicans were white. The reasons differ and change as the years pass by but I think one thing is obvious. Their "race" may have been different from what the actual individual identifies as or could have been completely wrong (as was evident with the Mexicans being labeled as White). I do not know if this is race as a social construct but it is something to notice. It was a white population choosing who qualified as what. Of course, this is different now as people identify themselves...but then again do they? I can say I am biracial and half white but as I walk down the street I am sure people only see a Black girl. Skin color, body shape, and overall composure, I believe, are huge defining factors in someones race as looked upon from someone else. You can identify yourself as a certain race but someone may think you are something else by your outside appearance. And yes, white people did make the rules in the past. It is made quite clear that white was the top of the hierarchy and black was the bottom and any other race probably hoped to be as close to white as they could. I'll close with this passage in the book that sums up the racial hierarchy pretty well: "The black/white imagery that dominated conceptions of race elsewhere gave way in Los Angeles to a notion of race as a graded continuum shading from white, at the top, downward through various forms of "nonwhite" (pg. 6).
ReplyDeleteI wasn't present during today's dialogue, but outside of class I have thought about and discussed the concept of race as a social construct quite a few times... so complex. As much as race is somewhat of an intangible characteristic, it can be a powerful part of someone's identity. What I think we have constructed is a society that defines race for us. America's past has injected race with preconceived and detrimental characteristics that we see in today's "stereotypes" or perpetuate via racism-- the hatred and violence that is rooted in our country's history is of our own creation. In GHR, we were recently looking at a data map that measured and compared the "happiest" countries in the world. The Scandinavian countries were displayed as practically the happiest places in the world... but what we also know about the Scandinavian countries is how homogenous their population is.. they have no racial tensions because there is no racial variation--everyone is white. This statistic made me think about our own American history and question, how much of our continuing problems have stemmed solely from our inability to establish racial equality?
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, race has become a very taboo and confusing topic to talk about. In the United States, the people that colonized and conquered the land were all white, so, naturally, white became the model citizen of the country. White became what's right, it became what new citizens should aspire to be, even if their skin color does not match. The way that "Fit to be Citizens" uses the word Americanization seems like a way of white washing immigrants and making them seem more "American". In this sense of the word, it seems like race is absolutely a social construct, because in America I don't believe that being considered as white necessarily mean that you have white skin, but it means that you conform to the standards of being a "true American". The white people in power get to decide whether or not someone is reaching the standards of being white in America, thus creating their own hierarchy in which they decide who goes where. By creating the social construct of race, white people have been able to justify their actions against other races and create a hierarchy in which they always place themselves on top.
ReplyDeleteBy deeming someone as white in America, it essentially labels them as someone who helped create this country and someone who has been in this country since its genesis. They aren't a freeloader or a hop on because they built this nation.
I do believe that race is a social construct that has been ingrained into our society as humans, beginning the minute white colonizers came face to face with people who looked different from them. In these colonizers efforts to implement their power and dominance over these native unknown people, I believe race was born in order to label a group of people who were to be obedient and to undue their "savage" ways. Before the period of exploration, race was never a thing that was brought up because everybody who was around each other looked the same. Now however, race was used as something to show who was what in order to keep others who were not white down and obedient. I would imagine these native people who white first came into contact with all over the world had their own methods of dealing with things, practices and traditions and I do not know what made these colonizers believe that being a white person was the ultimate best thing you could possibly in the universe. This is why when colonizers entered a foreign place besides being in search of precious materials their second focus was on changing the citizen's in the area to be just like them. This pattern can be traced throughout history. As well to the colonizers and white people in power, I am sure to them white is right, however to the people who may have been in a certain area for however long before the colonizers showed up, I'm sure they were fine with the way they were living.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I believe that race both is and isn't a social construct. There are some aspects of each race that is completely unique to that race and can physically and or mentally give them an advantage or disadvantage in life. These aspects are determined through genetics and evolution, not from people stereotyping a certain race-- those kinds of advantages and disadvantages are entirely created from race being a social construct. Obviously race and the oppression that comes with being a certain race as we see it today is much more of a social construct than some small differences in the way peoples bodies are due to evolution. I think King T'Challa of Wakanda said it best; "there are far more things that make people of different races similar than things what makes them different."
ReplyDeleteI believe that race is a social construct that is innate in our society due to the groupings between races that we have had for generations. I do not think there has been a time in the California where race didn’t play a factor in social, political, and economic situations. Race can be used as a biological explanation for social and cultural differences between different populations of people. For example, in Fit to Be Citizens Mexicans, Chinese and Japanese are considered biologically inferior while white people are considered superior. Obviously this is extremely negative as these assumptions about genetic differences between people of different races have had serious social and historical repercussions, and still prompt racist beliefs. As a daughter of a white mother and a Portuguese, Filipino, Mexican father I am often conflicted with my own identity. One one side I am a minority and on the other side I am part of the majority. Having to be put in these “boxes” is quite difficult and leads to stigmatization surrounding the minority races. Although racial equality seems such a far-fetched notion, accomplishing it would mean de-stigmitzing races and no longer having inferior/superior races.
ReplyDeleteRace is definitely a social construct. When identifying a group of individuals, or communities for that manner, by race, race becomes a social construct. Today in America, people of all races are racially categorized in crude ways that limit their ability to climb the economic ladder because of their race. The introduction of Fit to be Citizens also discusses race as binary and the challenges that ensue. Racial binary divides people into two categories: white and non-white. As seen on the graph in the introduction, Mexicans who were living in Los Angeles were seen as white throughout the early 20th century. The graph shows that people believed that common experiences, both cultural and living, created cross over between the binary, showing a belief in the fluidity of race.
ReplyDeleteRace by itself is not a social construct, although some of its implications are. When people say race is a social construct, I always find myself really confused as to what they mean by race. Yes, geographical isolation caused differing genetic mutations amongst different races that caused them to better adapt to the climate with which they were in. I can probably identify the specific genome that makes my skin a light melatonin tone and makes other people white. There is probably a scientific proof coded in my dna that causes me to have black hair and causes people like Tom to have curly blonde locks. I don't like when people describe race as a social construct because it construes race as this amorphous construct, erasing racial differences, when in fact race does exist and is influenced by genetics. The interpretation of race in its explanation of biological differences between races is where problems arise. For example, many white nationalists construe the prevalence of lactose intolerance and allergies to alcohol as reasons why Asians are genetically inferior. or interpretations of increased child mortality rate as reasons why mexican children are genetically inferior. obviously these are wrong, and such assumptions should be challenged, but that's not a reason to completely ignore race.
ReplyDeleteWhen humans and society are given the power to define race, race then loses its definition and those with unfair power gain total control of race's borders. This leads to huge problems in society and definitions start to be used as ways to hurt others rather than trying to help people with identity one of the hardest problems people face. When other people attempt to control another person's identity problems occur as the stigma around the term "race is a social contract". When white's decided that it was their duty to assign races to certain genders in Los Angeles there was always a purpose. Everyone knew that Mexicans were not white and did not look white so clearly these were characteristics or descriptions that were assigned and not given to the Mexicans by choice. It is also interesting that they would include such numbers and make such huge decisions in a random census. Shows how much Angelenos cared about race back in the late 1800s.
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