How Europeans constructed the concept of race

Paulina Ekstowicz

BLST 101

                                                

Race was a construct by people; it was not a naturally occurring idea. In order for race to happen, the process of racialization had to occur. Hirschman had mentioned early in his paper that “race and racism are not ancient or tribal beliefs but have developed apace with modernity over the last 400 years and reached their apogee in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century”( 2004, p386). Stating that Africans have not seen themselves as one united group; there were many different tribes and empires that were seeking power. Often those tribes would sell people from other tribes or prisoners of war in order to improve and enlarge their empire. When Europeans arrived to Africa to trade, colonize and later enslave the African people they made it clear that there is a distinction between Europeans (White) and Africans. That distinction was not only based on skin color, but also on cultural ideas, languages and religious beliefs and how Whites were portrayed as pure and Africans as impure.  

The first few lessons about race were not something shocking to me since I am anthropology major. I have been exposed to the idea that race was constructed not naturally occurring. However, many of my classes focused on the ideas why we are different focusing on physical differences, but we rarely focused on how race came to be. It is interesting to see this notion of racialization be brought up in a class, because it definitely made me think of the question if it was not for colonialization and the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade when would the differentiation between Black and White arise? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnN0RurtJWc which is something this video talks about, I do not agree 100% with the things they say but I found it interesting.

Lastly, I personally think that the idea of race started off in order for Europeans to distinguish themselves from Africans. The Europeans thought very highly of themselves and did not want to be compared to the enslaved Africans. To quote Hirshman “Racism is a structure of belief that the "other community" is inherently inferior and lacks the capacity to create a society comparable to one’s own”(2004, p389).This idea unfortunately still stands today, the higher powers who are mainly white, want to distinguish themselves from the blacks. The idea of keeping power still stands; the white man in power will go to great extents to make the minority powerless.

This idea could be seen with the Police Brutality and Black Lives Matter. Shortly after the Black Lives Matter riots and protests, whites decided to start saying that All Lives Matter, which was taking away people from the main focus of the protests. The focus being that it’s the Black Lives are the ones at risk, therefore we need to focus on that problem. Black men are often seen as thuggish or aggressive, yet that portrayal is often due to whom controls the media, which in majority of the cases are the White people. It circles back to the idea how White people who are in power are scared of losing it, they continue on with race because it seems to benefit them.

Academic Sources:

Hardimon, M.O. (2003). The Ordinary Concept of Race. The Journal of Philosophy, 100, 437-455. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655723.

Hirschman , C.(2004). The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race. Population and Development Review, 30, 385-415. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3401408.

Image by Matt Bors “Why do you people inject race into everything”

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/d0/27/04/d0270464307128016b2692f1b4128a9b.jpg

I found this image ironic and very sad, because even though White Europeans were the ones who constructed the idea of race up until this day many White Americans tend to get aggravated, uncomfortable or annoyed when the idea of race comes into the conversation.

Extrenal sources:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnN0RurtJWc

Short reading: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-09.htm