Rikia Evans 10/16/16
How Did The Term Race Become Normalized in America Today?
Throughout the United States, Caribbean and other Countries, we have been taught for generations that race is based on two types of people. In the new world this concept gave people a new social identity that you were either black or white. In fact the term race had no specific meaning before the 1500's, according to Benjamin Isaac it was referred to as having a set of idea's (Isaac, 2004). The term was established in the new world when European explorers came across Native people in North America in which they were fascinated by the darker skin complexion, different language, and different ways of life (Kincheloe III, 2007 p.1). Even then the word race wasn't as widespread or meaningful as it would be later in the United States.
According to Jean R. Soderlund in Upon These Shores, Race became concrete in Barbados when the Englishmen would refer to darker skin people as inferior and suitable for enslavement (Soderlund, 2000, p.63). Spanish explorers would call people of color negro then in which the term black was generated and this concept of race started to have a new biological meaning to it. By applying it to someone skin it told people if you looked different you were different. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy it states that race reflected biological foundation, meaning a group of members shared certain common characteristics, beliefs and physical features that another group did not (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008). It also started to mean that each generation would inherit these characteristics based off of origin. In the U.S. between the 1700's and the 1800’s whites used this racial ideology to justify slavery. Stating that blacks or people of color were inferior, animals and less than a man, and that whites were superior and pure. In the 1900’s they used the term to justify segregation, proposing that blacks needed separate entities from whites. These terms also existed in playwright's in theaters where it would portray blacks as incompetent people who were in need of whites in order to function. Within the years this word race would be systematically put in place and over time these views were carried down from one generation to the next making it become normalized in American society. My understanding of race has changed since I was younger. I thought the word had physical and biological meaning to it, which gave me the reason to believe that blacks and whites we’re completely different people almost like another species. I would say things like “that’s the reason we don’t get along because we are of different race”. Now that I am older I see the word race is only a social construct that has no relations to genes or DNA. I personally do not give that word power anymore but all over America it is still used today to classify and divide individuals into categories.
From the 1700’s until today the term race is perceived in the U.S. as a dividing tool along with religion and class. The invented term is now normalized, used widely and has been given a deeper meaning. Because of that it has caused racial inequality between Americans all throughout the country. Things like systematic racism is just one of the issues we face today because economically it has given advance to one race while disadvantaging another (Erwin, Miller, Katz, 2014,). The term race gathered a whole new meaning that would separate people of color in the U.S. and cause problems for generations to come.
References
Isaac, Benjamin. (2004) “The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity” Princeton University Press.http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7737.html
Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2008) “Race”
Erwin, N. Miller, C. C. Katz, S. M. (2014) “America’s Racial Divide, Charted” The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/americas-racial-divide-charted.html?_r=0
Kincheloe, W. John III. (2007) “American Indians at European Contact” http://ncpedia.org/history/early/contact
Soderlund, Jean R. (2000). "Creating a Biracial Society 1619-1720."Upon These Shores: Themes in the African American Experience 1600 to the Present. Ed. William R. Scott. New York: Routledge, 63-82. Print.
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