Dashana Vailes                                                                                                         October 2, 2016

BLST 101

Color Blocking in the Americas

Photo source: Osteoarthritisblog

            There are many different ways to interpret race. My understanding of race was different groups of people with differences in skin tone, culture and in some cases language. Connecting ethnicity with race is common, if you appear to be ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘Asian’, or ‘Spanish’ people will automatically place you in those ‘races’. From class discussions and readings, I now understand that race was made up by people to create a difference in status and superiority. Race is not something genetic or biological, this term is man made and used to separate groups of people.

Many scholars have different definitions of race. Ronald Chisom and Michael Washington, authors of Undoing Racism: A Philosophy of International Social Change, defines, “a specious classification of human beings created by Europeans (whites) which assigns human worth and social status using “white” as the model of humanity and the height of human achievement for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power.”(http://www.euroamerican.org/). This idea of whites being ‘the model of humanity’ is what corrupted America today. Many people believe this because it is plastered all over social media and taught to us the in grade school. We always glorify whites and their achievements through history but never grieve with or empower the Africans who were forced to leave their country and do hard labor. This idea of whites being superior sums up child hood history, teach them to glorify whites and the difference in race and they’ll grow with this idea instilled in their heads.

            Race is seen as a form of discrimination, separating groups making one superior creating room for racism. Scholars go deep into how, why and what race does to people, “They immediately entail the labeling and social learning of group categories, identity, feelings, beliefs, and related cognitive structures. These factors, in turn, are expressed in lines of interaction and behavior that flow from, reinforce and reconstitute, or come to transform those social categorizations.” (http://scholar.harvard.edu/). With one small distinction, race, various forms of hatred arises. This causing all the standards, qualifications and abilities one must have to be deemed a reasonable person. These distinctions come pre slavery with European men verses women; slavery slightly changed that, now these African women and men were all seen as less of people: black verses white.

            Racism today can be found in Donald Trump speeches and rally’s. The ideas he put out about blacks lacking ambition are a prime example of categorizing blacks with lower standers than whites. He chants he will “make America great again” but spits out harsh words for all races but his own, there is no greatness in adding to racism. The New York Times writes an article on ‘whites’ not understanding: When Whites Just Don't Get it, Part 7. Earlier this year The New York Times also published an article: The State of Race in America. Touching on the change of focus in the media, race is no longer a concern in the limelight of America when it is important as any other news story today. Race has been and always will be an important topic, but the hierarchy of America would never give blacks the satisfaction of true equality and elimination of the idea of race classification as a whole.

            

References

Charles M. Blow. (2016). The State of Race in America. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/opinion/the-state-of-race-in-america.html.

 

 Lawrence D. Bobo, Cybelle Fox (Dec., 2003). Race, Racism, and Discrimination: Bridging Problems, Methods, and Theory in Social Psychological Research. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bobo/files/2003_race_racism_and_discrimination_with_cybelle_fox_social_psycholgy_quarterly.pdf?m=1361822022, pp. 319-332.

Ronald Chisom and Michael Washington, (2009) Definitions of Race. http://www.euroamerican.org/library/definitions_race.asp.  

Nicholas Keistof. (2016) When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 7. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/opinion/sunday/when-whites-just-dont-get-it-part-7.html?_r=0.