While perusing the net, as I often do, I came across a curious piece that highlights what we have always known and espoused here at Afronerd-the concept of race is a fallacy. We all know that race is real as a socio-political construct, but any notion that it is biological in nature is absurd. Further, implications that there is such a thing as a pure race are also equally questionable. But what will it take to disseminate a new belief system to the masses regarding a new racial rendering? Perhaps the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center will be the first step in the propagation of such a racial paradigm. Take a look at this excerpt, courtesy of Courant.com:
A large photo in an exhibit about race at Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center shows a group of people dressed in white T-shirts.
On those shirts are written the races as they historically were defined by the Census Bureau. The older white man's shirt says "1790 — Free White; 1880 — White; 1970 — White"; a darker-skinned young woman's shirt says: "1900 — Indian; 1980 — Eskimo; 2000 — Alaska Native."
Just as the government has flailed about trying to decide how to categorize its citizens, so, too, have its citizens tried to figure out race.
Or not.
Ask CC Stinson, a Texas filmmaker, how many times she's almost missed meeting potential backers. After setting up a meeting on the phone, she sits at the agreed-upon coffee shop, waiting, and the person arrives and looks right past her because she doesn't sound black on the phone.
And precisely what does that mean?
Add to that weirdness, this: A notoriously racist website — emblazoned with slogans such as "White Pride, Worldwide" — includes in its rules for posting comments: "Avoid racial epithets."
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said "We can't afford to ignore race, not in our political campaigns, our media, our neighborhoods."
Oddly, the idea of dividing people into race is entirely human-made, and it's a rather recent construct. Scholars say race first emerged in the 14th or 15th century as European explorers stumbled upon riches they'd only dreamed of, presided over by fully formed cultures of people who were predominantly darker than themselves.
To justify taking the resources of the people — and the people, themselves — the ruling power created an entire body of (false) theories that suggested darker-skinned people were inferior, and thus should be assigned to do the heavy lifting, says Joe R. Feagin, sociology professor at Texas A&M University.
Over time, race became (falsely) the main predictor of attitudes, behaviors and potential. Such notions were bolstered by early biologists — such as Charles Darwin — who argued that race was biological, said Feagin. That began to change in the 20th century with groundbreaking anthropologists such as Franz Boas, a German immigrant who applied objectivity and scientific method to the study of cultures and people and found that predicting behaviors was far more complicated.
For more of the Courant article on Race, click on the link below:
New Museum Exhibit Questions How We Define Race
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